Gathas in the context of "Yasna"

Gāthā is a Sanskrit term for 'song' or 'verse', especially referring to any poetic metre which is used in legends or folklores, and is not part of the Vedas but peculiar to either Epic Sanskrit or to Prakrit. The word is originally derived from the Sanskrit/Prakrit root gai, which means 'to speak, sing, recite or extol', cognate to the Avestan term gatha.

A daeva (Avestan: 𐬛𐬀𐬉𐬎𐬎𐬀 daēuua) is a Zoroastrian supernatural entity with disagreeable characteristics. In the Gathas, the oldest texts of the Zoroastrian canon, the daevas are "gods that are (to be) rejected". This meaning is – subject to interpretation – perhaps also evident in the Old Persian "daiva inscription" of the 5th century BC. In the Younger Avesta, the daevas are divinities that promote chaos and disorder. In later tradition and folklore, the dēws (Zoroastrian Middle Persian; New Persian divs) are personifications of every imaginable evil. Over time, the Daeva myth as Div became integrated to Persian mythology.

Daeva, the Iranian language term, shares the same origin of "Deva" of Hinduism, which is a cognate with Latin deus ("god") and Greek Zeus. While the word for the Vedic spirits and the word for the Zoroastrian entities are etymologically related, their function and thematic development is altogether different. Originally, the term was used to denote beings of cultural folklore which predate use in scripture.