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He is an archaeologist, and served as the director of the Archeological Survey of India. The earlier version had some adjectives ascribed to him, which which do not accurately describe his profession and his work.
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== Works and publications ==
== Works and publications ==
Prof. B. B. Lal has published over 20 books and over 150 research papers and articles in national and international scientific journals.<ref name="BBLalChair"/><ref name=bookReview/> The British archaeologists [[Stuart Piggott]] and D.H. Gordon, writing in the 1950s, describe ''Copper Hoards of the Gangetic Basin'' (1950) and the ''Hastinapura Excavation Report'' (1954-1955), two of Lal's works published in the ''Journal of the Archaeological Survey of India'', as "models of research and excavation reporting."<ref name=bookReview/>
Prof. B. B. Lal has published over 20 books and over 150 research papers and articles in national and international scientific journals.<ref name="BBLalChair"/><ref name=bookReview/> The British archaeologists [[Stuart Piggott]] and D.H. Gordon, writing in the 1950s, describe ''Copper Hoards of the Gangetic Basin'' (1950) and the ''Hastinapura Excavation Report'' (1954-1955), two of Lal's works published in the ''Journal of the Archaeological Survey of India'', as "models of research and excavation reporting."<ref name=bookReview/> His works have been also characterized as "a systematic abuse of archaeology," by [[D. N. Jha]] <ref>Dwijendra Narayan Jha (2014), ''Rethinking Hindu Identity'', Routledge, p.14</ref> while Julian Droogan say Lal has been using archaeological data "to supplement historical texts that condone or promote the exclusion and even victimization of non-Hindu religious groups."<ref>Julian Droogan (2012), ''Religion, Material Culture and Archaeology'', A&C Black</ref>

In his later publications, Lal has taken a pro-Hindutva stance and engaged in [[historical revisionism]]{{sfn|Droogan|2012|p=67}} c.q. [[historical negationism]],{{sfn|Ahmed|2014|p=413}} arguing in favor of the discredited [[Indigenous Aryans]] point of view.{{refn|group=note|See:<br>* {{cite book |title=The Homeland of the Aryans. Evidence of Rigvedic Flora and Fauna & Archaeology |author=B. B. Lal |publisher=Aryan Books |year=2005|isbn=8173052832 }}<br>* {{cite book|author=Braj Basi Lal|title=The Rigvedic People: 'Invaders'?/'Immigrants'? or Indigenous?|year=2015|publisher=Aryan Books International|isbn=978-81-7305-535-5}}}} His works have been characterized as "a systematic abuse of archaeology,"<ref>Dwijendra Narayan Jha (2014), ''Rethinking Hindu Identity'', Routledge, p.14</ref> using archaeological data "to supplement historical texts that condone or promote the exclusion and even victimization of non-Hindu religious groups."<ref>Julian Droogan (2012), ''Religion, Material Culture and Archaeology'', A&C Black</ref>


===Indigenous Aryanism===
===Indigenous Aryanism===

Revision as of 16:33, 25 January 2021

Braj Basi Lal
The Minister of State for Culture (IC) and Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Dr. Mahesh Sharma releasing the book by the former DG, ASI, Prof. B.B. Lal, on the occasion of Foundation Day of National Museum, in New Delhi.
Born
Braj Basi Lal

(1921-05-02) 2 May 1921 (age 104)
Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh
NationalityIndian
Occupation(s)Archaeologist, Director-General Archaeological Survey of India (1968 - 1972)
Known forWork on Indus Valley Civilization sites, Mahabharat sites, Kalibangan, Ramayana sites

Braj Basi Lal (born 2 May 1921[1]), better known as B. B. Lal, is an Indian archaeologist. He was the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) from 1968 to 1972 and has served as Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. Lal also served on various UNESCO committees.[2] He received the Padma Bhushan Award by the President of India in 2000.[2]

Biography

Personal life

Born in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India,[3] Lal lives in Delhi. He has three sons. The eldest, Rajesh Lal, is a retired Air Vice Marshal, Indian Air Force, His second son Vrajesh Lal and the third, Rakesh Lal, are businessmen based in Los Angeles, USA.

Career

Lal obtained his master's degree in Sanskrit from Allahabad University, India.[4][5] After his studies, Lal developed interest in archaeology and in 1943, became a trainee in excavation under a veteran British archaeologist, Mortimer Wheeler, starting with Taxila,[5] and later at sites such as Harappa.[6] Lal went on to work as an archaeologist for more than fifty years. In 1968, he was appointed the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India where he would remain until 1972. Thereafter, Lal served as Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla.[2] The B. B. Lal Chair at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT, Kanpur) has been established by his son Vrajesh Lal to encourage research in science and technology related to archaeological work.[2]

Archaeological work

Between 1950 and 1952, Lal worked on the archaeology of sites accounted for in the Hindu epic Mahabharata, including Hastinapura, the capital city of the Kurus. He made discoveries of many Painted Grey Ware (PGW) sites in the Indo‑Gangetic Divide and upper Yamuna‑Ganga doab.[6]

In Nubia, the Archaeological Survey of India, Lal and his team discovered Middle and Late Stone Age tools in the terraces of the river Nile near Afyeh. The team excavated a few sites at Afyeh and cemetery of C-group people, where 109 graves would be located.[7][8] Lal worked on Mesolithic site of Birbhanpur (West Bengal), Chalcolithic site of Gilund (Rajasthan) and Harappan site of Kalibangan (Rajasthan).

In 1975–76, Lal worked on the "Archaeology of Ramayana Sites" project funded by the ASI, which excavated five sites mentioned in the Hindu epic Ramayana - Ayodhya, Bharadwaj ashram, Nandigram, Chitrakoot and Shringaverapur. In the seven-page preliminary report submitted to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Lal disclosed the discovery by his team of "pillar bases", immediately south of the Babri mosque structure in Ayodhya.[6][9]

Works and publications

Prof. B. B. Lal has published over 20 books and over 150 research papers and articles in national and international scientific journals.[2][6] The British archaeologists Stuart Piggott and D.H. Gordon, writing in the 1950s, describe Copper Hoards of the Gangetic Basin (1950) and the Hastinapura Excavation Report (1954-1955), two of Lal's works published in the Journal of the Archaeological Survey of India, as "models of research and excavation reporting."[6] His works have been also characterized as "a systematic abuse of archaeology," by D. N. Jha [10] while Julian Droogan say Lal has been using archaeological data "to supplement historical texts that condone or promote the exclusion and even victimization of non-Hindu religious groups."[11]

Indigenous Aryanism

In his 2002 book, The Saraswati Flows On, Lal criticised the internationally established Aryan invasion/migration theory, arguing that the Rig Vedic description of the Sarasvati River (identified with the Gagghar-Hakra river, which had dried up by 2000 BCE)[citation needed] as "overflowing" contradicts the mainstream view that the Indo-Aryan migration started at ca. 1500 BCE, after the Sarasvati River had dried up, and which, according to Lal, in the mainstream view led to the end of the Indus Valley Civilization (a view which is actually not entertained in mainstream scholarship). In his book ‘The Rigvedic People: ‘Invaders’? ‘Immigrants’? or Indigenous?’ Lal argues that the Rigvedic People and the authors of the Harappan civilisation were the same,[5] a view outside mainstream scholarship. Both books have been completely ignored in mainstream scholarship.

Ayodhya dispute

Lal took a controversial stance in the Ayodhya dispute. In 1990 he wrote that he had found the remains of a columned temple under the mosque.[12] In Lal's 2008 book, Rāma, His Historicity, Mandir and Setu: Evidence of Literature, Archaeology and Other Sciences, he writes (that):

Attached to the piers of the Babri Masjid, there were twelve stone pillars, which carried not only typical Hindu motifs and mouldings, but also figures of Hindu deities. It was self-evident that these pillars were not an integral part of the Masjid, but were foreign to it.[13]

Lal's conclusions have been contested by multiple scholars, questioning both the stratigraphic information, and the kind of structure envisioned by Lal.[12]

List of publications

Honors

  • Awarded the title of Vidyā Vāridhi by the Nava Nālandā Mahāvihāra, Nālandā University in 1979.
  • Awarded the title of Mahāhopādhyāya by Mithila Vishwavidyalaya in 1982
  • Honorary Fellowship for Life, Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1991
  • D. Litt. (Honoris Causa) by St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Russia, 1994
  • Awarded the Padma Bhushan by the President of India in 2000
  • D. Litt. (Honoris Causa) by the Deccan college, Deemed-to-be-University, 2014

See also

Notes

References

  1. ^ "Invitation to the fifth chapter of Sanskriti Samvaad Shrinkhla" (PDF). Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. 19 July 2017. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
  2. ^ a b c d e B. B. Lal Chair at IIT Kanpur Archived 20 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur website.
  3. ^ Coningham, Robin; Young, Ruth (31 August 2015). The Archaeology of South Asia: From the Indus to Asoka, c.6500 BCE–200 CE. Cambridge University Press. p. 83. ISBN 9780521846974. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
  4. ^ B. B. Lal, 'Let not the 19th century paradigms continue to haunt us!' Archived 4 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine, 19th International Conference on South Asian Archaeology at University of Bologna, Ravenna, Italy on 2–6 July 2007, online link, archaeologyonline.net
  5. ^ a b c "Archaeologist B.B. Lal talks about his book 'The Saraswati Flows On' : Books". India Today. 12 November 2001.
  6. ^ a b c d e Book review by Dr. V. N. Misra, Book review of The Saraswati Flows on: the Continuity of Indian Culture, by Chairman of Indian Society for Prehistoric and Quaternary Studies journal Man and Environment; (vol. XXVI, No. 2, July–December 2001)
  7. ^ Archaeological endeavours abroad, Archaeological Survey of India Official website.
  8. ^ a b Winters C (2012). "A comparison of Fulani and Nadar HLA". Indian J Hum Genet. 18 (1): 137–8. doi:10.4103/0971-6866.96686. PMC 3385173. PMID 22754242.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  9. ^ "I found pillar bases back in mid-seventies: Prof Lal". Indian Express. Retrieved 9 August 2013.
  10. ^ Dwijendra Narayan Jha (2014), Rethinking Hindu Identity, Routledge, p.14
  11. ^ Julian Droogan (2012), Religion, Material Culture and Archaeology, A&C Black
  12. ^ a b Reinhard Bernbeck, Susan Pollock (1996), Ayodhya, Archaeology, and Identity. Current Anthropology, Volume37, Supplement, February 1996, p.S139
  13. ^ "Ayodhya: High Court relies on ASI's 2003 report". Economic Times. 1 October 2010. Retrieved 9 August 2013.
  14. ^ a b Memoirs, On Excavations, Indus Seals, Art, Structural and Chemical Conservation of Monumets, Archaeological Survey of India Official website.

Sources

  • Ahmed, Mukhtar (2014), Ancient Pakistan - An Archaeological History: Volume IV: Harappan Civilization - Theoretical and the Abstract, Amazon
  • Droogan, Julian (2012), Religion, Material Culture and Archaeology, A&C Black

Further readingy

Wikiquote has quotations related to B. B. Lal.
Preceded by Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India
1968 - 1972 		Succeeded by

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