Veda means knowledge. These are a record of wonder, kept alive by careful chanting for thousands of years: light and fire, dawn and breath, and the one behind the many. There are four, each with its own work.
The foundation. Hymns of praise and awe to the powers of the world: fire, dawn, the waters, the cosmic order that holds it all together.
The how. The words and gestures of the sacred act, the working manual for ritual and the careful ordering of things.
The Rigveda set to song. The root of sacred music and chant, where sound itself becomes the offering.
The closest to ordinary life: healing, the home, protection and the practical. The folk wisdom of a people, kept beside the sacred.
Each Veda ends in a quieter, more searching layer called the Upanishads, the part later thinkers named Vedānta, "the end of the Vedas." Here the hymns turn inward. The big claims become questions you can sit with: who is the self, what is real, and how the small self (ātman) and the whole (brahman) might be one and the same. This is the philosophical heart the rest of the tradition keeps returning to.
More to come: a reader's way into each of the four Vedas, and plain guides to the major Upanishads.