I was watching the program INDIA on PBS last evening, and in the second section they got into the Vedas and reminded me of much of the scholarly anaysis that's gone into them. That was one of the items.
THere's still dispute about when they were written down. At the moment the common belief is they were converted from an oral tradition to writing entirely in India some time BC. At the same time, there's a less commonly held belief that they were rendered in writing, but kept secret as written documents, for several centuries.
This is roughly the same sort of idea frequently advanced with regards to the oldest works in the Bible. They were supposedly kept orally for many centuries until writing came along.
Turns out, of course, that writing was already in existence in the very place the original Vedic civilization and Hebrew culture came from ~~ Upper Mesopotamia!
I suspect both the Vedas and the background materials of the Pentatuch were maintained in written form at the earliest possible times ~ many centuries before the claim that they were written down.
I am aware that Indian scholars are presently in the throes of a rejection of the Aryans as having anything to do with Indian religious tradition and are willing to claim the Vedas are 100% an Indian production.
Fine, but other evidence points to foreign origin.