As was common in the ancient period, the Greeks sometimes described foreign gods in terms of their own divinities, and there is a little doubt that the Sourasenoi refers to the Shurasenas, a branch of the Yadu dynasty to which Krishna belonged; Herakles to Krishna, or Hari-Krishna: Mehtora to Mathura, where Krishna was born; Kleisobora to Krishnapura, meaning "the city of Krishna"; and the Jobares to the Yamuna, the famous river in the Krishna story.
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Upon visiting Mathurai of the Early Pandyan Kingdom, he described the kingdom as being named after Pandaea, Herakles' only daughter.
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However, in the aftermath of Alexander's conflicts in North-Western India, an Indian version of this classical Greek deity was identified by Megasthenes who travelled to India as the ambassador of the Seleucids during the reign of Chandragupta Maurya of the Maurya Dynasty.
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James Tod associated Megasthenes' Herakles with this ancient Indian deity.
It was first reported to Europeans by the Greek geographer Megasthenes around 290 BC, and was taken up by Ptolemy.