Virtue Victorious
Virtue Victorious
[徳勝童子] (Jpn Tokusho-doji)
A boy who is said to have offered a mud pie to Shakyamuni Buddha. According to The Story of King Ashoka, a work translated into Chinese by An Fa-ch'in in the early fourth century, one day when the Buddha was begging for alms in Rajagriha, he came upon two boys, Virtue Victorious and Invincible, while they were playing. The two boys wished to present an offering to the Buddha but had nothing to give, so Virtue Victorious hastily fashioned a mud pie and placed it in the Buddha's begging bowl, while Invincible pressed his palms together in reverence. Because of the blessings from this offering, a hundred years after the Buddha's death, Virtue Victorious was reborn as King Ashoka and Invincible as his consort. In the King Ashoka Sutra, translated by Samghavarman in 512, the boy Virtue Victorious appears with the Sanskrit name Jaya (Victorious), and the boy Invincible, with the name Vijaya, also meaning victorious.
