Hari Gopinath Das

1. Megasthenes wrote a book called Indika, the original of which has not been preserved, but it was quoted extensively by other ancient classical writers whose works are extant.’
2. According to Arrian, Diodorus, and Strabo, Megasthenes described an Indian tribe called the Sourasenoi, who especially worshiped Herakles in their land, and this land had two great cities, Methora and Kleisobora, and a navigable river, the Jobares. 
3. Sourasenoi refers to the Shurasenas, a branch of the Yadu dynasty to which Krishna belonged; Herakles to Krishna, or Hari-Krishna; Methora to Mathura, where Krishna was born; Kleisobora to Krishna pura, meaning “the city of Krishna”; and the Jobares to the Yamuna, the famous river in the Krishna story. Quintus Curtius also mentions that when Alexander the Great confronted Porus, Porus’s soldiers were carrying an image of Herakles in their vanguard.
4. The Buddhist Ghata Jataka text also mentions characters from the Krishna story, albeit in a somewhat garbled fashion, suggesting confused reminiscence of the legend
5. The earliest archaeological evidence of Krishna as a divine being is the Besnagar, or Heliodorus column in Besnagar, northwest Madhya Pradesh, dated to around 100 B.c.£. The inscription is particularly noteworthy because it reveals that a foreigner had been converted to the Krishna religion by this period— Heliodorus was a Greek. The column, dedicated to Garuda, the eagle carrier of Vishnu and of Krishna, bears an inscription in which Heliodorus calls himself a bhagavata (devotee of Vasudeva Krishna).

Everything about Krishna

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