The Sangam literature of early south India was composed mainly in the language

The Sangam poems, such as the Ettuthokai and Pattuppattu anthologies, were composed in Tamil between roughly the third century BC and third century AD, and describe kings, trade and society of the Chola, Chera and Pandya kingdoms. Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam literatures developed their written traditions considerably later, so the earliest classical works in them are not Sangam texts.