Sivi Kingdom

Sivi (alias Sibi, Shibi, Shivi) is mentioned as a kingdom and as the name of a king in the epic Mahabharata. Probably there was a Sivi king who became famous as Sivi or the kingdom itself may be named after him. Sivi (alias Sibi, Saivya) king was famous for his truthfulness. The legend about his truthfulness and compassion goes as follows: King Sivi protected a dove who was chased by a hawk (which wanted to eat the dove as its midday meal), and gave flesh from his thigh, as a substitute meal to the hawk.

It is also mentioned in the epic that Jayadratha was the king of Sindhu, Sauvira and Sivi kingdoms. Probably Sauvira and Sivi were two kingdom close to the Sindhu kingdom and Jayadratha conquered them, which would place Sivi somewhere in western Rajasthan though alternatively it could also be Sibi, Balochistan which is to the west of Sauvira and Sindhu and adjacent to both. Jayadratha was an ally of Duryodhana and husband of Duryodhana's sister Dussala.

According to Sivi Játaka, king Sivi (as Bodhisatta) had ruled Sivirattha with his capital at Aritthapura (Aristapura of Sanskrit) and is said to have donated his eyes to a blind Brahmana Chinese traveler Faxian records the scene of this story at So-ho-to (Swat), a country to the south of Oddiyana between the Kabol and the Indus rivers.

In some versions, Sivi appears as a personal name but in others it is the name of the country and its people. According to 7th-century Chinese monk and traveller Xuanzang, Sivika (Sibika) had cut his body to pieces to save a dove from a hawk. Xuanzang described Sivika as a personal name or an epithet. Chinese envoy Song Yun (518-20 AD) also refers to Sivika raja (Sivi king) and connects him to Oddiyana. Thus, the Chinese evidence connects king Sivi/Sivika and the Sivi people or country with the Oddiyana/Swat territory between the Kabol and Indus rivers, which forms part of modern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Aritthapura of the Buddhist Sivi Jataka is same as the Orobatis of Alexander's historians. B. C. Law connects Jataka's Aritthapura with Ptolemy's Aristobothro in the north of Punjab.

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