Abstract
ALTHOUGH scientific workers in many fields are familiar with the publications of the Asiatic Society i of Bengal, few, probably, are aware of the mass| influence of this ancient foundation upon Indian progress. A glimpse of the long history of the Society was given by Dr. Rai Upendra Nath Brahmachari, in his presidential address in 1929, just published in the Journal and Proceedings (N.S., vol. 25, 1932). Founded in 1784, as the result of an appeal by Sir William Jones for the institution of a society to inquire into the history, civil and natural, the antiquities, arts, sciences and literature of Asia, and numbering amongst its early patrons Warren Hastings and Lord Cornwallis, the Asiatic Society set going inquiries of a kind which had fallen into abeyance in the India of the late eighteenth century. Its “Asiatic Researches” created so great an impression in the literary world that in 1798 a pirated edition was brought out in England, and on the Continent a French edition, “Recherches Asiatiquos”, appeared in Paris. So early as 1808, a year after tho formation of the Geological Society of London and only eighteen years after Werner had propounded at Freiburg his doctrine of “Formations”, a special committee was formed “to propose such plans and carry on such correspondence as might seem best suited to promote tho Natural History, Philosophy, Medicine, improvements of the Arts and Sciences and whatever is comprehended in the general term Physics”.
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The Asiatic Society of Bengal. Nature 130, 604 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130604b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130604b0