Initiation rituals occupy a significant place in the structure o f traditional culture and embody its most relevant components. However, the study o f ritual culture is complicated for modern research due to the apparent lack o f empirical ethnographic material. As an a ttempt to solve this problem, this article offers an examination o f the logic and specificity o f the reflection o f initiation rituals in written texts characteristic o f the respective culture, primarily mythological and heroic-epic. In the theoretical part o f the study, the main issue was to isolate the characteristic features o f initiation rituals and analysis their general schemes in Indo-Iranian traditional culture. In the practical part the basic motifs o f ritual scenarios such as temporary death and rebirth, movement in the world vertical, body dissection, magic fever and their reflection in the Indo-Iranian myth-epic culture were highlighted. The data fo r this study was drawn from a wide range o f Indo- Iranian written sources, from Indian and Iranian religious texts to the Nart tales o f the peoples o f the Caucasus. The study showed th a t initiation rituals are reflected in a wide range o f oral and w ritte n texts. The study proved that they structure the social life o f the collective and contribute to the unification and purification o f society. Furthermore, initiation facilitates the return o f society at the time o f the beginning and, by immersing itself in it, humanity emerges reborn. A t the same time, the results o f the study extend knowledge o f the ways in which ritual scenarios are embodied in the sources available to the researcher, where they m ost often undergo a semantic transformation, retaining, however, their core structural components w ith out major changes.

Keywords: initiation, Indo-Iranians, temporary death, dismemberment, magic fever; shamanism, myth and epic.