"Kannada-Tamil literature, especially Kannada literature, is the key to the successive development of the literary and cultural, as well as the spiritual history of India. For we find, on the basis of Kannada literature mainly, that the course of India's religious, literary, cultural and national evolution can conveniently be divided into successive slabs of: (a) Pre-Buddhistic, (b) Buddhistic, (c) Jain, (d) Saivite, (e) Vaishnavite, (f) Late Hindu and lastly (g) the Modern periods. This succession is clearly shown in the history of Kannada literature, though the first two slabs, the Pre-Buddhistic and the Buddhistic are lost to us in Kannada and are available only in Tamil and in Sanskrit."