and Latvian songs.^74 The common features are clear and the inference
obvious. Three separate poetic traditions have preserved in recognizable form
a pair of figures from MIE mythology or religion. There is a rare consensus
among comparativists on this conclusion.
The As ́vins are the subject of more than fifty hymns of the Rigveda. They
are always referred to in the dual, As ́vína ̄ or As ́vínau, and do not have indi-
vidual names. The word as ́vín- means ‘having (to do with) horses’, and these
gods are notable for their constant travelling in a car drawn by horses that
never weary (RV 7. 67. 8). They are also known as the Na ̄ ́satya ̄ (or -au), which
may mean ‘Saviours’, though this is disputed. The appellation goes back
to Indo-Iranian times, as the Na-sˇa-at-ti-yas are among the treaty-gods of
Mitanni, and the related form Nåŋhaiθya appears as the name of a demon in
the Avesta (Vd. 10. 9, 19. 43).
They are youthful gods (yúva ̄na ̄, RV 1. 117. 14; 3. 58. 7; 6. 62. 4; 7. 67. 10),
even the youngest (TS 7. 2. 7. 2). They are Divó nápa ̄ta ̄ (1. 117. 12, 182. 1, 184.
1; 4. 44. 2; 10. 61. 4), which turns easily into Latin as Iouis nepotes.Nápa ̄t- is
‘grandson’, or more generally ‘progeny’; it is used in metaphorical expres-
sions, as when gods are described as the nápa ̄tah
̇
of abstract qualities such as
force or strength. So it is not necessary to look for an intermediate generation
between Dyaus and the As ́vins, even if ‘sons’ would normally be expressed by
su ̄návah
̇
or putra ̄ ́sah
̇. In fact in one passage (1. 181. 4) one of the As ́vins is said
to be Divó... putráh
̇
and the other the son of Súmakha-, ‘Good Warrior’. It
is not clear whether this Sumakha is a god such as Indra, to whom the epithet
is sometimes applied, or a mortal king.^75
The Greek pair are usually called the Diosko(u)roi, meaning the Sons of
Zeus, but sometimes the Tyndaridai, understood to mean ‘sons of Tyndareos’.
Tyndareos was a mortal king, the husband of Leda. Zeus visited her. Accord-
ing to some, the two boys, Castor and Polydeuces, were both fathered by Zeus,
while others say that Polydeuces was Zeus’ son and Castor Tyndareos’. They
appear to mortals in the form of young men (iuuenes, Cic. De orat. 2. 353, De
nat. deorum 2. 6).
Like the As ́vins, they are much associated with horses. Castor has the
(^74) Cf. (among others) F. G. Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre, i (Göttingen 1857), 607; Mann-
hardt (1875), 309–14; L. Myriantheus, Die Açvins oder arischen Dioskuren (Munich 1876), 46–
53, 108–14, 118 f., 154, 175–80; von Schroeder (1914–16), ii. 438–58; Güntert (1923), 253–76;
Ward (1968); Puhvel (1987), 59, 141–3, 228 f.; S. O’Brien in EIEC 161–5.
(^75) There are other references to their separate origins. At RV 5. 73. 4 they are said to have been
born in different places, and the early Vedic commentator Ya ̄ska, Nirukta 12. 2, quotes a verse
according to which they had different mothers, one of them being the son of Vasa ̄ti (‘Gloam-
ing’?), the other of Us
̇
as. At RV 1. 46. 2 their mother is Sindhu, ‘Stream’. On nápa ̄t- cf. L. Renou,
Études védiques et pa ̄n
̇
iniennes 7 (1960), 68; Dumézil (1968–73), iii. 21 n. 1, 23 f., 36.
- Sky and Earth 187