The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts. The Samhitas date to roughly 1500-1000 BCE and the circum Vedic texts as well as the reaction of the Sahmhitas date to c. 1000-500 BCE resulting in a Vedic period, spanning the mid 2nd to mid 1 Millennium BCE spanning the Late Bronze Age and the Iron age. Gavin flood sums mainstream estimates according to which the Rigveda was compiled from as early as 1500 BCE over a period of several centuries. The Vedic period reaches its peak only after the composition of the mantra texts with the establishment of the various Shakhas all over Northern India which annotated the mantra samhitas with Brahmana discussions of their meaning and reaches its end in the age of Buddha and Panini and the rist of the Mahajanpadas archaeologically, Northern Black polished ware. Michael Witzel gives a time span of c. 1500 BCE to c. 500-400 BCE. Witzel makes special reference to the near eastern Mitanni material of te 14 c. BCE the only epigraphic record of Indo-Aryan contemporary to the Rigvedic period. He gives 150 BCE Patanjali as terminus ante quem for all Vedic Sanskrit literature and 1200 BCE the early iron age as terminus post quem for the Atharvaveda. The general accepted historical chronology of the Vedas ranks the Rigveda as the first, followed by the Yajurveda, Samaveda and finally the Atharvaveda.
