Shiva Simha Singh (Sivasimha) was one of the most celebrated rulers of the Oiniwar (Sugauna) dynasty, the Maithil Brahmin line that governed Mithila between 1325 and 1526. A patron of art and Maithili culture who led campaigns against neighbouring powers, he is remembered above all for his lifelong bond with the poet Vidyapati, who served as his courtier and friend and who honoured him with the grand title Panchagaudeshwara.
It was Shiva Simha who granted Vidyapati the village of Bisfi in present-day Madhubani as a reward for his poems Kirtilata and Kirtipataka — the gift that ties the greatest Maithili poet to the soil of Mithila to this day. When Shiva Simha’s court was overrun by an invading Muslim army, Vidyapati went into exile, mourning his lost patron in his verse. (Sources differ on his exact regnal dates, and his birth and death years are not reliably documented.)
His reign marks the golden age of Mithila’s medieval court, when royal patronage turned the region into a flowering ground for both Sanskrit scholarship and a new vernacular literature.
