The Rig Veda: how old is a text first passed on by voice?
The hymns passed through an oral tradition before the surviving manuscripts were made. Composition, transmission, and copying have different dates.
How the hymns are dated
The Oxford Bibliographies entry on the Rig Veda summarizes the scholarly estimate that the hymns were composed in the northwest of the subcontinent in the later second millennium BCE. The research record models an early composition horizon of about 1500 to 1000 BCE as an estimated oral-textual range, not a manuscript date. Oxford Bibliographies / Oxford University Press ↗
Four dates, one tradition
The record flags a standing dispute on the age of the Vedic tradition. Traditional sacred chronology, estimated composition, the long period of oral transmission, and the dates of surviving manuscripts are distinct kinds of dates. The rule attached to the dispute is never to reduce them to one number.
Which date belongs to the manuscript?
When you see a date for a text, ask which of the four it is. A manuscript date is a floor for the written witness, not the age of the words. A composition estimate rests on language, meter, and references, each of which can be argued.
What could narrow the hymns’ date?
What would it take to narrow a composition estimate by a century? Linguistic change, references to datable objects, or something else? Name the evidence before trusting the precision.