'horse possessors', IAST: Aśvin), also known as the Ashvini Kumaras and Asvinau,[3] are Hindu twin gods associated with medicine, health, dawn, and the sciences.

[4] In the Rigveda, they are described as youthful divine twin horsemen, travelling in a chariot drawn by horses that are never weary, and portrayed as guardian deities that safeguard and rescue people by aiding them in various situations.

[2][5] There are varying accounts, but Ashvins are generally mentioned as the sons of the sun god Surya and his wife Sanjna.

[7][8] The twin gods are also referred to as Nā́satyā (possibly 'saviours'; a derivative of nasatí, 'safe return home'), a name that appears 99 times in the Rigveda.

[8] The epithet probably derives from the Proto-Indo-European root *nes- ('to return home [safely]'), with cognates in the Avestan Nā̊ŋhaiθya, the name of a demon – as a result of a Zoroastrian religious reformation that changed the status of prior deities –, and also in the Greek hero Nestor and in the Gothic verb nasjan ('save, heal').

[5][12][13] Reflexes in other Indo-European religions include the Lithuanian Ašvieniai, the Latvian Dieva Dēli, the Greek Castor and Pollux; and possibly the English Hengist and Horsa, and the Welsh Bran and Manawydan.

You free Atri, the seer of the five peoples, from narrow straits, from the earth cleft along with his band, o men—confounding the wiles of the merciless Dasyu, driving them out, one after another, o bulls.

O Aśvins—you men, you bulls—by the wondrous powers you draw back together the seer Rebha, who bobbed away in the waters, like a horse hidden by those of evil ways.

According to the text, the Ashvins were born after the sun god Vivasvat and his wife Saranyu (Sanjna) engaged in love making in the form of a stallion and a mare respectively.

According to the legend, the sun god, Surya-Savitra, had a daughter named Sūryā (with a long ā) and arranged a horse-race to choose her bridegroom.

The sukta 112 describes that when the sage Dirghashravas prayed to Ashvins for rain, the twins poured sweet water from the sky.

Similarly, Bhujyu was saved after his father or evil companions abandoned him at sea when the twins brought him home from the dead ancestors (RV, 1.119.4).

[9] The Ashvins also raised Vandana, rescued Atri from a fissure in the earth and its heat, found Vishnapu and returned him to his father, restored the youth of Kali, brought Kamadyū as a wife for Vimada, gave a son to Vadhrimatī (whose husband was a steer), restored the eyesight of Rijrashva, replaced the foot of Vishpala with a metal one, made the cow Śayu give milk, gave a horse to Pedu, and put a horse's head on Dadhyañc.

[2] According to the Shatapatha Brahmana, Ashvins once tried to seduce Sukanya, the daughter of king Saryati and wife of an old sage named Chyavana.

Desperate to know the reason for her words, they fulfilled her condition and the sage finally revealed that Ashvins were excluded from a yajna (fire sacrifice) performed by the gods, and thus, they were incomplete.

When a young Chyavana emerged from the lake, Ashvins also took forms similar to him and Sukanya successfully identified her husband.

[30][b] The Rigveda also describes the Ashvins as "bringing light": they gave "light-bringing help" (svàrvatīr…ūtī́r, 1.119.8) to Bhujyu, and "raised (Rebha) up to see the sun" (úd…aírayataṃ svàr dṛśé, 1.112.5).