Sharadvat's Austerities and the Birth of Kripa and Kripi
The sage Sharadvat masters the science of weapons through austerities so intense they alarm Indra. The king of the gods sends a celestial dancer to break his concentration. Sharadvat resists, but his body betrays him, and his spilled seed gives birth to twins in a clump of reeds.
Sharadvat, son of the sage Gautama, was born with arrows in his hand. His mind was not drawn to the Vedas but to Dhanur Veda — the science of weapons. He pursued this knowledge not through a teacher, but through austerities, acquiring every weapon through the sheer power of his penance.
His success became a problem. Indra, king of the gods, looked down and saw a mortal mastering arsenals through tapas (austerities). Such concentration, aimed at martial power, worried him. Indra summoned an apsara (celestial dancer) named Janapadi and gave her a command: “Create impediments in his austerities.”
Janapadi went to Sharadvat’s beautiful hermitage. She was clad in a single piece of cloth. She began to tempt the sage, who stood with his bow and arrows in hand. Seeing her wandering alone in the forest, her form unparalleled in the worlds, Sharadvat’s eyes widened. The bow and arrows slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground. His body went numb.
But his mind, fortified by knowledge and the accumulated power of his penance, held firm. He used his patience to resist the temptation. Yet a sudden, overwhelming fever overcame him. Without his conscious notice, his semen issued forth.
The sage left the hermitage and the apsara. His seed fell on a clump of reeds. There, it divided itself into two. From that division, a pair of twins was born.