Pliny's use of the word as the name of a king was incorrect; it applies to the country, and is also a dynastic name or royal title.
The Chēra backwaters seem to be referred to by Pliny in a debated passage on the trade of Ceylon with the "Seres" (VI, 22): "their accounts agreed with the reports of our own merchants, who tell us that the wares which they deposit near those brought for sale by the Seres, on the further bank of a river in their country, are removed by them if they are satisfied with the exchange."
Here Seres must be read as meaning Chēra, the Ch and S being interchanged, just as the neighboring Chola kingdom is always Soli in Sinhalese records.
It is quite possible that Chēra is also meant by Pliny's Seres of XXXIV, 41, who sent the best iron to Rome; this being a product of Haidarābād, and referred to in § 6 of the Periplus, as shipped from India to Adulis. See also under Sarapis, p. 146.
The "silent trade," noted by Fa-Hien in Ceylon itself, is referred to under § 65, and again by Pliny (VI, 20), Pausanias (III, xii, 3), and Cosmas Indicopleustes (book II).
For further references to Chēra and other Tamil states growing out of the original establishment at Korkai, see Vincent Smith, Early History, Chap. xvi;—Caldwell, Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, introduction; also History of Tinnevelly;—Burnell, South Indian Palaeography;—Shanguni Menon, History of Travancore;—Francis Day, The Land of the Permauls;—J. B. Pandian, Indian Village Folk;—Sir Walter Elliott, Coins of Southern India;—Foulkes, The Civilization of the Dakhan down to the 6th century B. C., in Indian Antiquary, 1879, pp. 1–10;—K. P. Padmanabha Menon, Notes on Malabar and its place-names, in Indian Antiquary, Aug., 1902;—Wilson, The Pāndyas in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, iii, 199;—Dawson, The Chēras, in J. R. A. S., viii, 1;—Sewell, Lists of Inscriptions, and Sketch of the Dynasties of Southern India, in the Archaeological Survey, Madras, 1884;—F. Kielhorn, Dates of Chola and Pāndya Kings, in Epigraphia Indica, Vols. IV–VIII, inclusive;—Imperial Gazetteer, Vol. II, Chaps. i, iii, iv, v, ix;—Bühler, Indische Palaeographie, and, generally, his Grundriss der Indo-Arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde;—Fleet, The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts, and Bhandarkar, Early History of the Dekkan, in Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, I, ii;—Loventhal, Coins of Tinnevelly;—Hultzsch, Southern Indian Inscriptions.
54. Abounds in ships.—In these protected thoroughfares flourished a sea-trade, largely in native Dravidian craft, which was of early creationand of great influence in the interchange of ideas as well as commodities, not only in South India, but in the Persian Gulf,
