This is what has been done to the Vedas (and many other ancient teachings) by modern scholarship. Its terms for the Divine, which all have a general as well as specific meaning, become the names of local or limited Gods. A universalist approach is reduced to a multiplistic one. The ancient names for different Gods are in  their truest sense only different names for God.  

Some of us may say it is hard to believe the ancients had such a broad approach to the Divine as to have conceived of a single Divine with many attributes. After all their cultures were much more limited than ours and not always in very good communication with each other. Their understanding and control of the material world appears quite limited as well. 

Why should we think they had a better grasp of the infinite and the eternal? On the other hand, their cultures did last much longer than ours, some enduring for thousands of years   relatively unchanged like that of ancient Egypt. Their focus was much more on the realm of religion than ours. Our modern archaeologists find their ruins filled with fetishes and objects of worship possessing a ritualistic rather than a practical value.

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