The Vedas form a layered archive
The Rigveda belongs to an earlier phase than the Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda and later prose and philosophical texts. These works were composed and transmitted orally across generations rather than written at one moment.
Their language, ritual concerns and geography change over time. Historians therefore read the corpus as evidence for several social worlds, not as a single eyewitness account of an entire millennium.