Is the old Tamil grammar Agathiyam truly lost?

The current Tamil script, what we call as the phonetic script (a letter/symbol representing each phoneme of a language), evolved from the Tamizhi (or Tamil-Brahmi) script. It is obvious that these Brahmi scripts (the precursors of all Indian scripts) are not indigenous. They probably have originated from the Aramaic scripts (compare Brahmi and Aramaic and you’ll know, and regarding the direction in which it is distributed, the evidences comes from archeology)

These scripts, at the earliest, must have reached the Indian subcontinent by about 800 - 600 BC. But, clearly the languages of this land, Tamil and Sanskrit, are much older than this period.

So, how are people writing these languages, for hundreds of years, before these scripts arrived here? What indigenous writing system we had?

We must have had a pictographic / ideographic writing system as our original form of writing (similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs and/or Chinese scripts)

This idea can be supported with some titles seen in the names of Sangam poetry.

We had titles like ‘kanakkaayan’ and ‘ezhuthan’.

Kanakku (கணக்கு) refers to the Tamil Nedunganakku (the Tamil Alphabets) and one who is well versed in it (technically a primary teacher) is called ‘kanakkaayar’.

On the other hand, ‘ezhuthu’ must have referred to the old picto-/ideo-graphs. One who is able to read and write the old (and the then obsolete) writing system, must have been called with this title.

Ezhuthu in Tamil means to draw. Even now, this word also means drawing as well as letters. This clearly supports both the fact that we had an original pictorgraphic writing system and that was replaced by the alphabetic system (as a matter of convenience and standardization).

Coming back to Agathiyam, this must have been a grammar book written in the old form of writing, as well as including grammar rules for and based on that writing system.

As the writing system gets replaced by the ‘new’ phonetic system, people would have slowly felt the need for a new grammar, which is in and is based on the new writing system - the Tholkaapiyam was created.

This is one possible way how Tamil must have lost its most important grammar work - it became obsolete. The same must be true for other literature as well; some of them must have been transliterated, while others have been lost due to lack of this. 

Also, consider the fact that these literature are written in palm-leaf manuscripts, which will last only for a couple hundred years, they need to be copied down in new leafs to conduct them to the future - once the pictographs had none to read or interpret them, they were lost to eternity! 

During the reign of Raja Raja Chola, who patronized the Tamil script that evolved from the Pallava grantham, the precursor of our present script, he have transliterated some old inscriptions and copper-plate grants which are written in a older script, Vatteluthu, a direct descendant of Tamizhi. This was mentioned in the inscriptions itself. And a couple of inscriptions and copper-plate grants are now available in both the scripts! This is a process which is very similar to the one I described above!

So, is the Agathiyam still available? May be! 

But, even if it is, we will not be able to ‘read’ it, not with confidence and clarity - much like the Indus Valley Scripts - and who, knows, some of those IVC scripts are actually fragments of Agathiyam (or some other Tamil literature!)

Could Agathiyam be lost because Tamils had no script at that time, and they are not know to have a 'orally transmitting' tradition?

This is also possible. 

However, regarding oral transmission, there is this case with Tamils: The ‘legend’ (if not history,) of how the grammar ‘Iraiyanar Agaporul’ and its commentary by Nakeerar (Madurai “Kanakkaayanaar”’s son, note this ‘kanakku’) came in to being narrates how poets of the Sangam (Pandiya kingdom) were asked to go to other places to gain a living, since the country was affected by a severe drought. When the poets came back after many years (or many generations, possibly) they were able to “recollect” and reproduce the Tamil grammars (most likely the Tholkaappiyam) except for the Porul Ilakkanam. This is when divine intervention happens (as per the legend) and God of Madurai himself gives the Iraiyanaar Agapporul (and hence the name!)

Now, renowned research scholar Mayilai Seeni. Venkatasami is of the opinion that even this text (Iraiyanaar Agapporul) is basically a reproduction of Tholkappiyam’s Porul Athikaaram - he notice a lot of similarity between the two.

So, this might be an indication that Tamils too had the tradition of handing down things orally.

I need not go at length with this, for even when they had palm-leaf manuscripts, they didn’t mass produce them - so, essentially it will be like one copy per region and all those who wish to use it must undergo teaching under a teacher and memorize the text (the term ‘paadam odal’ or ‘paadam kettal’ refers to this, even now I have heard old people saying ‘enakku adu paadam illai’ if they don’t know something by heart!)

Clearly, all literature, including technical ones, are codified in to verses (like the Venpaa, for example) to enable easy memorization. So, Tamils did have the tradition!

I also opine that script does affects a languages grammar.

For example, any English grammar text will talk about punctuation. That is part of the way English works. Tamil was not in need of punctuation marks - we had ‘particles’ that take care of stress and other things (like, ‘thaan’ for emphasizing), but, any recent Tamil grammar will also talk about punctuation marks in Tamil - this is clearly a script driven addition!

In olden days, the usage of pulli, and the practice of not putting one explicitly in inscriptions and palm-leaves must have had its impact in the grammar - we see Tamil having well specified rules as to the doubling of consonants and consonant clusters - this makes the words easy to read even without the pulli marked!