English: The Vedas are scriptures of Hinduism. They consist of four layers of texts: samhita, brahmana, aranyaka and upanishads (they also have Vedangas such as above, and appendices to these main layer of texts). The samhitas are dated to between 1500 and 1000 BCE. The Brahmanas and Aranyaka texts are probably from about 1100 to 700 BCE, while the Upanishads from about 900 to 200 BCE. Each Vedic layer consists of books.

These oldest texts are in the archaic Sanskrit language. The Vedic texts between 900 to 500 BCE are close to the classical Sanskrit, which was formalized by Panini. The Brahmana hymns that cover a mix of topics: benedictions, yajna ritual methods and verses, mythologies, cosmologies, questions and riddles relating to many fields of human activities, drama and poems, philosophy and mystical speculations.

The above image is from a Yajurveda manuscript. Each page is written on both sides (recto, verso). The image is of the front page 1 front (recto) and 1 back (verso).

The bolded letters are the text, the light diacritics, any colored or light marks, light dashes, characters and dots over or under the letters are coded markers found in Sanskrit manuscripts for readers and reciters, i.e. dandas separate the words/sentences/verses, avagrahas for various compounds, circles for the galitas, and the particle iti. Manuscript pages in the Hindu traditions (as well as Buddhist and Jain traditions) may also contain colored or light texts on the margins, which may be either corrections to a scribal errors or they are commentaries of the owner or some scholar / citations / reference-by-incorporation of another ancient Hindu scholar's work.

This manuscript was acquired in the 19th-century, and was produced in or before the acquisition. The photo above is of a 2D artwork from the text that was itself authored more than 500 years ago. Therefore Wikimedia Commons PD-Art licensing guidelines apply. Any rights I have as a photographer is herewith donated to wikimedia commons under CC 4.0 license.