“A better case for the early linguistic and ethnic history of South Asia can be made by investigating the names of rivers. In Europe river-names were… - Michael Witzel

Given the scholarly inclinations among the expatriate communities in North America we may expect a slew of new interpretations, in fact, a whole new cottage industry. Their impact will appear especially on the internet.

Even now, however, three RV periods can be established, as follows: 1. early Ṛgvedic period: c.1700-1450 BCE: RV books 4, 5, 6. 2. middle, main Ṛgvedic period : c.1450-1300 BCE: books 3, 7, 8.1-47, 8.60-66 and 1.51-191, most probably also 2; prominent: Pūru chieftain Trasadasyu and Bharata chieftain Sudās and their ancestors, and 3. late Ṛgvedic period: c.1300-1200 BCE: books 1.1-50, 8.48-59 (the late Vālakhilya hymns), 8.67-103, large sections of 9, and finally 10.1-84, 10.85- 191; emergence of the Kuru tribe, fully developed by the time of Parīkṣit a descendant of Trasadasyu... With Indo-Aryan settlement mainly in Gandhāra/Panjab, but occasionally extending upto Yamunā/Gangā, e.g. Atri poem 5.52.17; the relatively old poem 6.45.13 [sic] has gāngya [...] Even the oldest books of the RV (4-6) contain data covering all of the Greater Panjab: note the rivers Sindhu 4.54.6, 4.55.3, 5.53.9 ̳Indus‘; Asiknī 4.17.5 ̳Chenab‘; Paru ṣṇ ī 4.22.3. 5.52.9 'Ravi‘; Vipāś 4.30.11 (Vibali) 'Beas‘; Yamunā 5.52.17; Gangā 6.45.31 with gāngya 'belonging to the Ganges‘ [...] G. van Driem and A. Parpola (1999) believe that these oldest hymns were still composed in Afghanistan [...]. This is, however, not the case as these books contain references to the major rivers of the Panjab, even the Ganges (see above).

“Right from the beginning, in Ṛgvedic times, elaborate steps were taken to insure the exact reproduction of the words of the ancient poets. As a result, the Ṛgveda still has the exact same wording in such distant regions as Kashmir, Kerala and Orissa, and even the long-extinct musical accents have been preserved. Vedic transmission is thus superior to that of the Hebrew or Greek Bible, or the Greek, Latin and Chinese classics. We can actually regard present-day Ṛgveda recitation as a tape recording of what was composed and recited some 3000 years ago. In addition, unlike the constantly reformulated Epics and Purāṇas, the Vedic texts contain contemporary materials. They can serve as snapshots of the political and cultural situation of the particular period and area in which they were composed. […] as they are contemporary, and faithfully preserved, these texts are equivalent to inscriptions. […] they are immediate and unchanged evidence, a sort of oral history ― and sometimes autobiography ― of the period, frequently fixed and ‘taped’ immediately after the event by poetic formulation. These aspects of the Vedas have never been sufficiently stressed […]” (WITZEL 1995a:91).