The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), was founded by the eminent Sanskrit scholar, Henry Thomas Colebrooke, on the 15th March, 1823. It received its Royal Charter from King George IV on the 11th August 1824, ‘for the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia‘. From its incorporation, the society has been a forum, through lectures, its journal, and other publications, for scholarship relating to Asian culture and society of the highest level. It is the United Kingdom's senior learned society in the field of Asian studies. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (JRAS) is published by Cambridge University Press four times a year, each issue containing a number of scholarly essays, and several book reviews. Fellows of the society are elected regularly and include highly accomplished and notable scholars of Asian studies, including Sir Richard Burton (1821-90), the noted explorer and translator of One Thousand and One Nights and the Kama Sutra; Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1943), the renowned archaeologist of the ‘Silk Road’ and Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the famous Bengali writer and poet.
