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One of the chief features of progressive civilisation is the institution of literary and scientific societies. In Western countries they began to be established only after the Renaisance. Even so late as A. D. 1599 'modern science had not yet been born, mathematics were in their infancy, the literatures of the great modern languages were only beginning to be made'. The eastern nations, on the contrary, were in their own way so far advanced in civilisation as to found literary academies and to hold commercial intercourse with the highly civilized Greeks, Phœnicians and Romans. And the epigraphical discoveries in Southern India and the critical study of early Tamil works have disclosed many facts tending to confirm the very high antiquity of Tamil literature, and the tolerably advanced state of Tamil civilisation so early as the first or second century before the Christian era.

The ancient classics of the Tamil people frequently refer to sangams or societies of learned men.