On this day, Sir William Jones, who had founded The Asiatic Society in Calcutta in 1784, expressed in a letter his anxiety about an annual publication from the society that he had wanted to bring out. He had called for papers from “all curious and learned men”.

“The Society has yet published nothing, but has material for two quarto volumes and will, I hope, send one to Europe next spring,” he said in the letter.

The publication came out eventually. The first volume came out in 1788 under the title Asiatick Researches, instead of Asiatick Miscellany originally thought of by Jones, with the subtitle ‘Transactions of the Society Instituted in Bengal, for enquiring into the History and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences and Literature, of Asia’, says the society website. The volume published 28 articles, one-third of which were penned by Jones.

The society did not have the funds for the publication of the journal initially. Its first five volumes were brought out by a private publisher. From the sixth volume till the twentieth, the society began to bring out the publication at its own cost, after which the journal was discontinued in 1842.

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