The study of Sanskrit has been dominated by philology on the one hand and ancient history on the other. For the former it served as a dead language that might offer clues to the Indo-European past, and for the latter a source of information about a vanished civilization. In both cases the language was often seen to have become the preserve primarily of experts outside India. This colloquium brings together scholars working with Sanskrit materials to discuss ways in which the language and its rich textual heritage has continued to enjoy a life into our own times. While it might not be a "living" language in any conventional sense, Sanskrit plays an important role in a whole range of cultural practices, political references and as part of a national imaginary. Can this "afterlife" become a field of study in its own right, providing as it does the context even for textual production in Sanskrit for the past two centuries?