[2] Members in the early days of the club included some of the founding figures in American scholarship on Sanskrit, the Ancient Near East, Judaica, and the art and archaeology of Asia.
Among the club's founders were Cyrus Adler, Tatsui Baba, George Dana Boardman, Stewart Culin, Morton W. Easton, Paul Haupt, Edward Washburn Hopkins, Marcus Jastrow, Morris Jastrow, Jr., Benjamin Smith Lyman, Robert W. Rogers, Mayer Sulzberger, Henry Clay Trumbull, and Talcott Williams.
[3] Other early members included William F. Albright, Robert Pierpont Blake, Rhys Carpenter, Franklin Edgerton, W. Max Müller, E. A. Speiser, and Solomon Zeitlin.
The thirty-fifth anniversary of the foundation was marked by a colloquium in 1923, the proceedings of which were published in 1924;[5] the volume features essays by Max L. Margolis, James A. Montgomery, Walter Woodburn Hyde, Franklin Edgerton, and Theophile J. Meek.
Sponsored events include presentations of works-in-progress by members, an annual lecture and banquet, and public colloquia on themes of cross-cultural concern.