Asiatic Society of Bengal, scholarly society founded on Jan. 15, 1784, by Sir William Jones, a British lawyer and Orientalist, to encourage Oriental studies. At its founding, Jones delivered the first of a famous series of discourses.
An outstanding scholar from the University of Oxford, Jones arrived in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on Sept. 25, 1783, as a supreme court judge. The society was founded shortly after his arrival. The Asiatic Society had the support and encouragement of Warren Hastings, the governor-general (1772–85) of Bengal, though he declined its presidency. Until Jones’s death (1794) it was the vehicle for his ideas about the importance of Hindu culture and learning and about the vital role of Sanskrit in the Aryan languages. Indians were first admitted as members in 1829.
Headquarters are in Kolkata. The society owns an art collection that includes paintings by Peter Paul Rubens and Joshua Reynolds. The society’s library contains some 100,000 general volumes, and its Sanskrit section has more than 27,000 books, manuscripts, prints, coins, and engravings. The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal is published regularly.