In discussion of the history of the Indo-Aryans a common problem is periodization. When you want to periodize, you have to ask yourself how many cuts are most appropriate for a reasonable representation of the developments that took place. The 3-cut formula Early, Middle, Late is is easy to express & widely used for many kinds of periodization but you have to ask yourself if it is appropriate when applied to the corpus that is termed “Vedic” in philological sense. Also is the genre termed “Vedic” temporally exclusive of other corpora like “itihAsa”, “purANa”, darshaNa-shAstra, dharma-shAstra, Ayurveda, jyotiSha etc. Thus, when people are referring Vedic texts we don’t see a standard usage of the periodization though instinctively people understand the relative ages unless you are of the literal apauruSheya belief. I would posit that minimally you need at least 5 cuts for the Vedic corpus v.v. approximately:
- Period 1. Core RV
- Period 2. Core AV + YV + early extant brAhmaNa
- Period 3. Later YV (e.g. chamaka prashna) + core brAhmaNa + early sUtra (e.g. vivAha)
- Period 4. prAjApatya + early upaniShat + further sUtra
- Period 5. classic upaniShadic brahmAvAda, late sUtra, “sectarian” vedic works.
Of course we should keep in mind that these layers are only talking of the texts as we have them. From comparisons with the Iranic tradition we can say that even the ancestral tradition had brAhmaNa, nirukta & nighaNThu like texts. Thus, we are only talking of the brAhmaNa & sUtra texts as we have them.
Moreover, we know that the Adhvaryava & atharvan tradition existed side-by-side the hautra tradition; hence, there were precursors of this text alongside the RV. Some material in the extant versions of these texts might indeed have very deep roots, but we have assigned them a later period simply because of the form they have come to us.
Finally, we did not assign the vedA~Nga-s here because again they are texts which are more prone to updating e.g., jyotiSha.
In conclusion, one has to be careful when using a term like late or early Vedic text & be more precise about what exactly in them you are assigning to the period you mention.(5)