The Bicentenary of the Birth of Sir William Jones, F.R.S., Founder of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal

T HE Bicentenary of the birth of Sir William Jones on the 28 September 1746, was celebrated by the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal on the anniversary of its Foundation Day, 15 January I946. The importance of this occasion to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal will be realized by all who are interested in the progress either of letters or of science in India. Sir William Jones, who was already known as a distinguished scholar and linguist, arrived in Calcutta in September 1783, to take up his appointment as a Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court at Fort William in Bengal. He soon noticed the want of an organized association as a drawback to progress; this led to a meeting on 15 January 1784, of 30 of the leading European gentlemen of Calcutta, under the chairmanship of Sir Robert Chambers. At this inaugural meeting Sir William Jones delivered a ' Discourse on the Institution of a Society for enquiring into the History, civil and natural, the Antiquities, Arts, Sciences and Literature of Asia.' The name for the Society adopted at this inaugural meeting was the 'Asiatick Society.' Early in the nineteenth century (I829) ' The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland' was founded in London by a retired president of the Asiatic Society, and the latter, to avoid confusion, later (I85I) changed its name officially to ' The Asiatic Society of Bengal'; to this has been added the appellation 'Royal' following the celebration of the i5oth anniversary of the foundation of the original Asiatic Society in I934. It must be emphasized here that the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, in spite of its modified name, is the original and senior of all Asiatic Societies. In his inaugural dissertation Sir William Jones expanded the definition of the aims of the Society contained in the title of his address, and his words have been paraphrased into: