The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c7.s1.2

c7.s1.2

It would seem possible to present the Vedic gods in the order of their importance, but many are equally, or nearly equally, important. We find nearly a dozen of them engaged in creating the world, and rather more than a dozen engaged in producing the sun, placing it on the sky, or preparing a path for it; under these circumstances it is not easy to rank them.¹ The gods have not all of them come into existence at the same time. Some belong to Indo-European times; others to Indo-Iranian times. Of the rest some come from an earlier, some from a later period of the Veda. If we had all the dates we might try a chronological arrangement pure and simple, but we do not have all the dates.