Which ancient times? It was only frozen after Panini’s time, but there had been changes from original rigvedic pronunciation by then. And your quibbling is ind

Which ancient times? It was only frozen after Panini’s time, but there had been changes from original rigvedic pronunciation by then. And your quibbling is indicative that there have been also been changes today as well - e.g. southern speakers tend to pronounce vowel r as “ru” while others say “ri” and at some point in time the pronunciation was likely more like American English r.