American Oriental Society
From Bodhicitta
American Society for Premodern Asia
The American Oriental Society, founded in 1842, is the oldest learned society in the United States devoted to a particular field of scholarship, preceded only by such distinguished organizations of general scope as the American Philosophical Society (1743), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1780), and the American Antiquarian Society (1812). From the beginning its aims have been humanistic. The encouragement of basic research in the languages and literatures of Asia has always been central in its tradition, encompassing such subjects as philology, literary criticism, textual criticism, paleography, epigraphy, linguistics, biography, archaeology, and the history of the intellectual and imaginative aspects of Asian civilizations, especially of philosophy, religion, folklore, and art. The scope of the Society's purpose is not limited by temporal boundaries: all sincere students of human civilization and its works in Asia, at whatever period of history, are welcomed to membership. The Society publishes the Journal of the American Oriental Society, a quarterly academic journal founded in 1843 and one of the most important American serial publications in the historical languages of Asia. In 2025 the Society changed its name to the American Society for Premodern Asia, and the journal adopted the new name beginning in 2026. Its website is aspa1842.org.
