References to India and Tamils are found in Greece. Greek historians Megasthanes,Strabo and Arrian speak about the relationship between India and Greece.
Of Tamils,exhaustive descriptions are found in these authors’ works.
Krishna is mentioned as having been married to s Pandyan princess and had a daughter,Pandiah.
He had her married to A Pandyan prince .
Megasthanes also refers to Kavata, Kapatapuram,which dates back to First Tamil Sangam,which predates Mahabharata.
Megasthanes took Krishna Concept, incorporated it as Heracles in Greece. Krishna as Hercules
There is also the view that Balarama was Hercules
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Pandyas are also mentioned by Greek Megasthenes where he writes about southern kingdom being ruled by women. Megasthenes knew of the Pandyan kingdom around 300 BCE. He described it in Indika as occupying the portion of India which lies southward and extends to the sea. According to his account, it had 365 villages, each of which was expected to meet the needs of the royal household for one day in the year. He described the Pandyan queen at the time, Pandaia as a daughter of Heracles.
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (c. 60 – c. 100 CE) describes the riches of a ‘Pandian Kingdom’:
…Nelcynda is distant from Muziris by river and sea about five hundred stadia, and is of another Kingdom, the Pandian. This place also is situated on a river, about one hundred and twenty stadia from the sea….
The Chinese historian Yu Huan in his 3rd-century text, the Weilüe, mentions the Panyue kingdom: …The kingdom of Panyue is also called Hanyuewang. It is several thousand li to the southeast of Tianzhu (Northern India)…The inhabitants are small; they are the same height as the Chinese…. John E. Hill identified Panyue as Pandya kingdom. However, others have identified it with an ancient state located in modern Burma[39] or Assam.
The Roman emperor Julian received an embassy from a Pandya about 361. A Roman trading centre was located on the Pandyan coast at the mouth of the Vaigai river, southeast of Madurai.
Pandyas also had trade contacts with Ptolemaic Egypt and, through Egypt, with Rome by the 1st century, and with China by the 3rd century. The 1st-century Greek historian Nicolaus of Damascus met, at Antioch, the ambassador sent by a king from India “named Pandion or, according to others, Porus” to Caesar Augustus around 13 CE (Strabo XV.4 and 73).
References and Citations.
https://www.rarebooksocietyofindia.org/postDetail.php?id=196174216674_10156874725751675
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