believed that they came to Southern India, where they founded a new kingdom. They probably called themselves Pandyas because they pretended to be of the same race with the Pandavas, and they named their new southern capital Mathura, or Madura, as the town is called to the present day. Megasthenes no doubt refers to Krishna under the name of Hercules, and he had probably heard some legend which was then current in India, about the foundation of the southern kingdom by Krishna for his daughter.
And lastly, the island of Ceylon was known in the time of Megasthenes. It was conquered by Vijaya, a prince of Magadha who had been exiled by his father for his misdeeds in the fifth century before Christ. When Megasthenes came to India, Ceylon was already a Hindu kingdom. The island was called Taprobane by the Greeks, the name being slightly altered from the Pali name Tambapanni, which corresponds to the Sanskrit Tamraparni, or the copper-leaved. Megasthenes says that the island was separated from the mainland by a river, and that the country was productive of gold and large pearls, and elephants much larger than the Indian breeds. Ælian, who wrote long after Megasthenes, but got much of his information about India from the account of Megasthenes, states that Taprobane was a large mountainous island full of palm groves, that the inhabitants dwelt in huts of reeds, and that they transported their elephants in boats which they constructed for the purpose, and sold them to the King of Kalinga.
