What is 'Jaya' in the Itihasa Mahabharatam ?

I recently finished reading Amish Tripathi's Shiva Trilogy. He has been of good service to the cause of re-establishing the greatness of Bharat and its culture.

At the fag end of his third book, The Oath of the Vayuputras, he has hinted that he is going to write on the Mahabharatam. I think it will be a sort of retelling the entire story. Good intentions on his part and wish him the best. But he has thrown another hint , that the Mahabharata was originally named as 'Jaya' and that further it was changed to its present name.

We need to be assertive when such immature claims are made. I believe , Amish will not prove another of those cut and paste kind of historical and maythological fiction writers.

All my readers will be eager to know what, then, does  the word 'Jaya' mean. Read on.

Katapayadi Sankhya and the number coding in Samskrita language: 

The word 'Jaya' finds mention in the very first sloka of Mahbharata

naaraayaNam namaskrutya naram chaiva narOththamam |
deveem saraswatim vyaasam tathO jaya mudheerayet  ||

The meaning of this sloka is this " After prostrating (before) NarayaNa , the best among men, and Saraswati and Vyasa , I narrate this story of "Jaya".

This "Jaya" should not directly translated as vicory. In Mahabharata , there are no true victors. The whole epic is not alone about the great war. It is an amazing collection of numerous stories, chronicles, philosophies, life styles stitched into a befitting canvas. So, for finding the meaning of Jaya, we should look elsewhere.

All through the ages Samskritam continued to be a dominating language in Spirituality(aathmeeka) , Religion(Dharmika) , Ganitham (mathematics) Pure Sciences (vigyaanika) , technology, Medicine(Ayurvedika) , Astronomy (Jyotisha), and Music (sangeeta)  fields .

In Jyotisha and other fields , a kind of coding was developed for each akshara (letter) in Samskritam languagae. By this arrangement, each akshara was assigned a number in the 0 to 9 range. The arrangement goes thus

kaadi nava-
taadi nava
padi pancha
yadi ashta

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0
ka	Kha	Ga	Gha	nga	Ca	Chha	Ja	Jha	nya
Ta	Ttha	Da	DDha	Na	Tha	Tthha	dha	Ddhha	na
Pa	Pha	Ba	bha	ma
ya	ra	va	la	ssa	sha	S a	ha

The way of calculating of a code as per the Katapayadi sankhya is also a bit peculiar. First the two starting numbers belonging to each letter of a given word should be found out and written down. Then they are reversed. The reversed number is the equivalent code.

Applying this rule to Jaya, we get  8 for Ja and 1 for ya. They constitute the number 81. Reversing, we get the number 18.

It is this number that Vyasa is stressing to have a connection with his epic. How ?

1. Mahabharatam has eighteen Kandams.
2. The great Mahabharatam war lasted 18 days
3. There were 18 akshouhini of soldiers and animals that participated in the war.
4. In the Bhagavad gita also there are eighteen chapters


This is the reason why Vyasa symbolically referred his itihasa as "Jaya". But its name is Mahabharatam only. Our writers should take note of this and write accordingly and avoid confusion among our new generation