Fellows of the society are elected regularly and include highly accomplished and notable scholars of Asian studies; they use the post-nominal letters FRAS.

[6] The Royal Asiatic Society was established by a group primarily composed of notable scholars and colonial administrators.

It was intended to be the British counterpart to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, which had been founded in 1784 by the noted Sanskrit scholar and jurist Sir William Jones.

However, the purview of the Society extends far beyond India: all of Asia and into Islamic North Africa, and Ethiopia are included.

The Society does have a few limitations on its field on interest, such as recent political history and current affairs.

After World War II, with the gradual end of British political hegemony 'east of Suez', the Society maintained its disinterested academic focus on Asia.

[2][3][4][5][21] The post-nominal letters are used by some academics working in Asia-related fields,[22][23] and have been used in the Society's Journal in reference to the Indologist Michael D. Willis,[24] to the poet and translator of Bengali William Radice and to the Islamic scholar Leonard Lewisohn.

[29] The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society is published by Cambridge University Press four times a year, each issue containing a number of scholarly essays, and several book reviews.

[33] The Fund became one of a large number of Victorian subscription printing clubs which published translations, re-issued historical works or commissioned original books which were too specialized for commercial publication; but unlike most of those now defunct organizations, the work of the Royal Asiatic Society Oriental Translation Fund is on-going into the 21st century with a "new series" and "old series" microform catalog available for scholarly research.