The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c32.8

v1.c32.8

Sinhalese tradition also relates that the Nāgas, or semi-divine snake-men of Hindu myth, once dwelt in Ceylon, and gives details of their wars, which are said to have been settled by the intervention of Gautama Buddha. These Nāgas belong to the realm of fiction; but as traditions record that they drove out the earlier inhabitants from the North and West, and it is a fact that the name *Nāgadīpa*, 'Nāgas' Island,' long clung in early times to these regions down to the neighbourhood of Madawachchiya, it is possible that in these legends there may lie some faint shadows of historical reality.