B. B. Lal


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

Early life and background

Born in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India, Lal obtained his master's degree in Sanskrit, including the Vedas, with a First class degree from Allahabad University, India.

Career

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, and later at sites such as Harappa. 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.

Archaeological work

Between 1950-52, 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 sites in the Indo‑Gangetic Divide and upper Yamuna‑Ganga doab.
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. Lal worked on Mesolithic site of Birbhanpur, Chalcolithic site of Gilund and Harappan site of Kalibangan.
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, Lal disclosed the discovery by his team of "pillar bases", immediately south of the Babri mosque structure in Ayodhya.
Prof. B. B. Lal has published over 20 books and over 150 research papers and articles in national and international scientific journals. In his 2002 book, The Saraswati Flows On, Lal criticised the earlier Aryan invasion/migration theory, arguing that the Rig Vedic description of the Sarasvati River as "overflowing" contradicts the claim made by certain previous historians that the Indo-Aryan migration occurred 300 years after they contend the Sarasvati River dried up and which they also contended had led to the end of the Indus Valley Civilization. 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, they were the two faces of the same coin..

Ayodhya dispute

In Lal's 2008 book, Rāma, His Historicity, Mandir and Setu: Evidence of Literature, Archaeology and Other Sciences, he writes :

"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."

Legacy

The B. B. Lal Chair at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur has been established in his honour.
The British archaeologists Stuart Piggott and D.H. Gordon describe Copper Hoards of the Gangetic Basin and the Hastinapura Excavation Report, two of Lal's works published in the Journal of the Archaeological Survey of India, as models of research and excavation reporting.

Honors

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.

Works