Ashvins

Summary

The Aśvins are twins in the Rigveda, two horsemen who drive a golden chariot drawn by horses or birds. They appear in the sky before the dawn, bring good things to people, turn away misfortune and sickness, and the singers call them "the two physicians". They are also called the Nāsatyas, and under that name they appear with Mitra, Varuṇa and Indra as witnesses in a treaty between the Hittites and Mitanni in the fourteenth century BCE.

Their story is a series of rescues that hymn 1.116 counts out one by one. Tugra left his son Bhujyu in the sea "as a dead man leaves his riches", and the Aśvins carried him in a ship with a hundred oars, borne by winged things for three nights and three days, back to his home across the sea that gives no hold. The sage Atri was thrown into a burning pit, and they cooled the fire and brought him out. Cyavāna was an old man everyone had left; they stripped his skin from him like mail, and he was young again. Viśpalā's leg was cut off in battle like a bird's wing, and they gave her a leg of iron to walk on. A father blinded his son Ṛjrāśva for feeding a hundred rams to a she-wolf, and the Aśvins gave him back his sight. Ghoṣā was growing old in her father's house without a husband, and they gave her one. Hymn 10.39 calls them "healers of the blind, the thin and feeble, and the man with broken bones".

They also have a wedding story. Sūryā, the daughter of the Sun, mounted their chariot, and the gods consented. In hymn 10.85 they come as wooers on their three-wheeled chariot, and they are the groomsmen when she is given to Soma, a witness of the sacred marriage. Rigveda 1.116.17; 10.85.8–9, 14.

The idea their stories turn on is that help comes at the hour before the light has risen. They are called upon "at eve and dawn", travel three times by night and three times by day, and reach those whose road has been cut: the man drowning at sea, the man shut in a pit, the old man, the blind man, the woman whose leg was cut off, the girl who missed her marriage. They give back what was lost: home, youth, sight, a leg, a husband. That is why they are "sons of Heaven", brothers by descent of the dawn Uṣas, reaching people ahead of the sun.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. It is a reading proposed on the method, since the Indian essay does not mention them. In Sanskrit aśvin means "possessed of horses", from aśva, "horse", with the suffix -in of possession; the dual is aśvinā. Remove the suffix and aśv- remains: a glottal onset, ś and v, the letters of Arabic asā. Lane: asā al-jurḥ, "he dressed the wound, treated it"; the āsī is the physician; isāʾ is medicine; and asā baynahum, "he made peace between them". On this reading the Aśvins are al-āsiyān, "the two physicians", which is what the hymns make them: two healers who give back sight, legs and youth. The horses of the Sanskrit name are the means of that work: by them the twins reach the drowning man and the blind man wherever they are.

Linguistic Root

Attested forms

Al-āsī

Lane: asā al-jurḥ, "he dressed the wound; treated it curatively"; the āsī is "a physician; one skilled in curative treatment, particularly of wounds", plural usāh and isāʾ; isāʾ and asūw are "a medicine, a remedy", whence the saying "medicine dispels grief". From the same root, asā baynahum is "he made peace between them", and āsāhu bi-mālihi "he shared his property with him and made him his equal".

The sounds: the opening vowel of aśva answers the glottal stop, as the opening vowel of Indra answers the glottal stop of andā in the Indian essay's reading of Indra; Sanskrit ś belongs to the sibilant group in which s and sh fall together; and v answers Arabic w, as in Varuṇa. So the three letters stand in order. But aśva is the ordinary Sanskrit word for horse, Avestan aspa, so the reading reads the letters of the horse word by what the twins do, not by the word's sense.

Nāsatya and uns

Monier-Williams derives nāsatya most probably from the verb nas and glosses it "helpful, kind, friendly", rejecting the explanations that make it "not untrue". On the method we read it as Arabic uns: in Lane anisa bihi is "he was friendly, familiar with him, cheered by his company", uns is the contrary of waḥsha, desolation, and the anīs is a companion. The initial glottal stop of the Arabic root drops, and n and s remain. On this reading the Nāsatyas are "the two companions" who come to the man left alone at sea or in the pit and take away his desolation.

Key Mythic Narratives

Their descent

The hymns do not agree on a mother and father, but they agree that the twins come from sky and water at the edge of night. Hymn 10.17 says that Saraṇyū, Tvaṣṭṛ's daughter and the mother of Yama, was hidden from mortals and a woman like her put in her place, and that she bore the Aśvin brothers and then left both pairs of twins.

The horse's head and the secret of the honey

Hymns 1.116 and 1.117 tell that the Aśvins brought the sage Dadhyañc a horse's head, and with that head he spoke to them and revealed the secret of the sweet drink, the secret of Tvaṣṭṛ.

The road with nothing to hold

Hymn 1.116 describes the sea in which Bhujyu was carried as one "which giveth no support, or hold or station", and says the Aśvins brought him back "in animated vessels, traversing air, unwetted by the billows". Their rescue passes over the water, not through it.

Symbolic Reading

The Indian essay reads Uṣas, the dawn, as "the power that renews itself", rising every day, and in the hymns the Aśvins come before her and with her: "Now Morning with her earliest light shines forth, dear Daughter of the Sky: high, Aśvins, I extol your praise." If the dawn, for the essay, is the daily renewal of light, the twins are the ones who come at that edge to renew what has worn out in people: the old man becomes young, the blind man sees.

The stories themselves show a society of herders and travellers: a son left at sea, a father who blinds his son for losing the rams, a woman whose leg is cut off in war, a girl growing old in her father's house, an old man left by his people. In each case help comes from outside the household, from two riders who own nothing but a chariot and a remedy.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

At Ugarit there is another pair of twins, sons of El, Shahar and Shalim, dawn and dusk, the two ends of the day; the Aśvins are called upon at evening and at dawn. Among the Greeks the brothers of Helen, the Dioscuri, "sons of Zeus", are two horsemen who save ships when the storm rages; they are seen darting through the air on tawny wings, and the wind and waves fall still, as the "sons of Heaven" save Bhujyu at sea in a flying vessel. The father's name in the two titles is the same: Zeus is Dyaus. Among the Etruscans the twins are called "sons of Tin", the sons of Tinia. Homeric Hymn 33, to the Dioscuri.

In Iran Mithra opens the road for Tishtrya, and Tishtrya comes in the shape of a white horse. At the Indian wedding the Aśvins stand as the groom's companions, a witness of the sacred marriage.