Who was the founder of the 'Asiatic Society of Bengal'?

1. A

   Jonathan Duncan

   (a) Jonathan Duncan. Duncan, as Resident at Benares, founded the Sanskrit College there in 1791. He did not found the Asiatic Society of Bengal.

2. B

   Sir William Jones

   (b) Sir William Jones. Jones founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal at Calcutta on 15 January 1784 to study Asian languages, laws and antiquities. Warren Hastings encouraged the circle but was not the founder. That Jones founding is the official key.

3. C

   Warren Hastings

   (c) Warren Hastings. The first Governor-General patronised Oriental learning and Jones’s circle; patronage is not founding.

4. D

   William Bentinck

   (d) William Bentinck. Bentinck belongs to the 1830s Anglicist turn and sati abolition, decades after 1784.

Summary. Official key is (b) Sir William Jones. The Asiatic Society of Bengal dates to 15 January 1784 in Calcutta. Duncan’s Benares college, Hastings’s patronage and Bentinck’s later reforms are neighbouring Company facts, not the founding. The Society later became the Asiatic Society, Kolkata, and issued Asiatick Researches.