ASVINS, in Vedic Hindu mythology, twin gods of light, and after Indra, Agni and Soma the most prominent in the Rig Veda, invoked in more than 5o hymns. As spirits of the Dawn they pre pare her path in the sky. Called sons of the sun, offspring of the ocean, the youngest of the gods, "honey-hued," they are insepa rable. The Boghaz-Keui inscription (c. 140o B.c.) in Asia Minor mentions them with Indra and Varuna and they are unquestion ably Zoroastrian, though they seem to be the Nasatya demons of the Avesta, and their resemblances to the Dioscuri are manifest. In the Epic era they survived chiefly as physicians and dentists and so rather lost caste. In modern Hinduism they have all but ceased to function.
See E. W. Hopkins, Epic Mythology (Strasbourg, 1915).