The word 'Ayurveda' comes from the word 'ayur' meaning 'life' and the word 'veda' meaning 'to know'. Ayurveda means 'the science of life', and is a medical system practised in South Asian Countries especially in India, Sri lanka and Nepal.

Ayurveda's mythological origins, though, are attributed to the Indo-European Nasatya or Aswins, twin physicians of the gods of the ancient Indo-European pantheon. Four thousand year old references to the Nasatya are found in the now extinct, Hurrian and Hittite languages in Turkey, and in the Sanskrit language in India. Ayurveda is considered the upaveda or accessory Veda to the Atharva Veda. The four Vedas are the world's oldest literary documents in an Indo-European language.

A classic ayurvedic text, that parallels the time frame of the Atharva Veda, is the Charaka Samhita. Written in the Indus Valley area around 1000 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) in Sanskrit, it is a treatise on general medicine. This strongly suggests the probability that ayurveda, though of pan Indo-European origins earlier, had begun to evolve into a distinct entity within the subcontinent by the first millennium B.C.E.