World view and traditions of the population of the Andronovo historical and cultural community (according to the funeral rites)

Purpose. We aimed at studying the traditions and world views of the Andronovo population of the steppe bronze. Due to the absence of direct written sources and zoo-anthropomorphic pictorial tradition on the subject, the burial practice of the Andronovo population, whose detailing presupposes the existence of extensive mythological ritual knowledge concentrated in the worldview sphere, is the foreground of research as the main informative base. Results. The earliest evidence that specifies certain aspects of the worldview of the ancient society appears at the dawn of the Andronovo era. The finds of stone and bronze maces are curious, which, obviously, marked the patrimonial military aristocracy, closely connected with the cult of the military deity. Of great interest are paired and double burials in which a man and woman were buried. It can be assumed that such a burial rite is a practical realization of the sacred marriage, the participants of which are heterosexual twins, close in content to Yama-Yami or Yima-Yimak. Regular reproduction in the funeral practice of the ritual of twin burials indicates that the heterosexual twins were given a significant place in the religious and mythological system of the ancient society. A certain place in the system of religious priorities was occupied by twins of the same sex, in particular males, such as, for example, the Vedic Ashvins. Double burials of the deceased of the same sex in specially prepared burial chambers, where skeletons of different sexes are usually located, are excluded, which excludes their marriage relations and makes us see in the ritual contemplated a twin, possibly, a ritual burial. There was another, more complex and rare rite of the triple burial, which includes a woman occupying the central place and two men located on each side. Such triple burials symbolize the triune image of the goddess and two twins, obviously the elder and younger, widespread in Indo-European mythology. Conclusion. Based on the well-known mythology of the funeral rite reproduced in the ritual, a whole series of sacred actions are observed pointing to the developed cults of various deities close to the Indo-Iranian pantheon and playing a fundamental role in the religious mythological representations of the ancient society. However, it should be borne in mind that the polytheism of antiquity is a dynamically changing system rather than a static, «petrified» structure, which visually demonstrates the successive stages of the social and economic development of the society itself.