The description of history in the Rig Veda is suggestive of the ascendancy of the Puru tribe (one amongst the five tribes of Nahusa, the others being Yadu, Turvasa, Anu and Druhyu) initially and later the Bharatas.
Rig Vedic explanation of geography of Bharat with regard to the names of various places mentioned, more or less pertains to the area from Uttar Pradesh in the east to Afghanistan (mentioned only once in Rig Veda) in the west, the easternmost river mentioned in the text being the Ganga, and the westernmost being the western tributaries of the Indus.
The places named directly or indirectly in the Rig Veda can be classified into five basic geographical regions, from west to east, on the basis of present-day terminology: Afghanistan, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Amongst these, Uttar Pradesh of the present-day is more or less equivalent to the land known in ancient literature as Aryavarta or Madhyadesa. Neither the word Aryavarta, nor the word Madhyadesa, is found in the Rig Veda. Nor is there any direct reference in the hymns to any place in Uttar Pradesh. But, the hymns IX.96 and X.179.2 composed by a Bharata Rishi who attributed his compositions to his remote ancestor, Pratardana present an important mention. Pratardana was a king of KASI, which is in eastern Uttar Pradesh. This can only mean that the Bharata Kings of the early period of the Rig Veda were Kings of KASI and, in the light of the other information in the Rig Veda, the land of the Bharatas extended from KASI in the east to Kurukshetra in the west. (This description has been given by Shrikant G. Talageri in his historical analysis of Rig Veda.)
This means that, essentially Uttar Pradesh is what Bharat is referred to in the primary Vedic and Hindu scripture Rig Veda and not the whole of India from north to South.
The importance of river Sarasvati in Rig Veda is much more than river Indus, as it is worshipped as one of the Three Great Goddesses in the Aprisuktas of all the ten families of composers (being named in nine of them and implied in the tenth). The Indus contrarily finds no place in these Aprisuktas. The contrast between the overwhelming importance of Sarasvati and the relative unimportance of Indus is striking – therefore the importance of identification of Sarasvati as Ghagar-Hakra for the Indians, which has been wrongly claimed as Sarasvati and has also been scientifically proven to be wrong assumption.
The evidence of the rivers in the Rig Veda is therefore also unanimous in identifying the area to the east of the Sarasvati as the original homeland of the Bharatas.
It may also be noted that all the pilgrim-centres of Hinduism are located to the east of Haryana. There is no Hindu pilgrim centre worthy of particular note in the Punjab or the northwest India. And this also puts in extreme doubt, the Indian claim that Indus Valley Civilization is Indian civilization, which according to even Rig Vedic explanation is a wrong claim.