Jaya, the beginning

If I remember correctly, Jaya is the original name of the epic we know as the Mahabharata today. I’m not exactly sure why the Mahabharata is called so. When I think about it, it seems like the conjunction of the two words, ‘Mahā’ which means great and ‘Bhārata’ which probably means ‘belonging to Bharata’. This is interesting because Bharata, although is mentioned in the story as the son of Shakuntala and Dushyanta, is not exactly the central character of the story. Agreed that he is not only the ancestor of almost all the central characters in the meat of the story, and is supposedly the greatest king of all time. However, I still don’t know if that was the reason why the story is named so.

Jaya on the other hand I think simply means victory. At least that is how it is in my native Telugu. As I understand, the story has three beginnings. The first beginning is in the Naimisha Aranya where the story is narrated by Ugrashravas to the other sages. He in turn had actually heard the story being narrated by Vysampayana at Janmejaya’s snake sacrifice. This means that Vysampayana’s is the second beginning. Vysampayana himself was a disciple of sage Veda Vyasa who is credited with the composition of the epic. Veda Vyasa’s is the third beginning of the story.

The numbers are obviously in descending order. Veda Vyasa began the story, Vysampayana retold it and was listened to by Ugrashravas who told it again to the sages at Naimisha.

Or it could simply be that Jaya and Mahabharata are not the same at all. Like how the United Kingdom and Britain are different from each other.

We shall see.