According to the latest research by Olivelle, there is reason to doubt the likelihood of repeated editing and revising. He argues that the Vishnu Smriti is the work of a single Brahmin expert in the Dharmaśāstra tradition and also a devotee of Vishnu. Olivelle shows that the text was very likely composed between 700 and 1000CE, based on several factors: 1) the centrality of written documents and events which occurred in the Common Era being cited within the text, 2) the vocabulary used (for example, the word pustaka, which was first used by a sixth-century astronomer), 3) the fact that the Vishnu Smriti is the only Dharmaśāstra to mention satī or to deal comprehensively with tīrthas, and 4) unique iconographic correlations between descriptions of Vaishnava images in the text and specimens found only after the eighth century in Kashmir.