India, Dec. 13 -- For the first time since the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947, the study of Sanskrit has quietly returned to Pakistan, with the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) introducing a formal course in the classical language.

What began as a three-month weekend workshop has now been upgraded into a full four-credit university course after receiving an encouraging response from students.

Dr Ali Usman Qasmi, Director of the Gurmani Centre for Languages and Literature at LUMS, told The Tribune that Pakistan is home to one of the richest yet least-studied collections of Sanskrit manuscripts in the region.

"A significant collection of Sanskrit palm-leaf manuscripts was catalogued in the 1930s by renowned scholar ...