B. B. Lal

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B. B. Lal
Born
Braj Basi Lal

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NationalityIndian
Occupation(s)Archaeologist, Director-General Archaeological Survey of India (1968 - 1972)
Known forWork on Indus Valley Civilization sites, Mahabharat sites, Kalibangan

Braj Basi Lal (ब्रज बासी लाल) (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 Government of India in 2000.[2]

Early life and background

Born in Jhansi, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, India,[1] Lal obtained his master's degree in Sanskrit, including the Vedas, with a First class degree from Allahabad University, India.[3][4]

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,[4] and later at sites such as Harappa and Sisupalgarh in Odisha.[5] 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]

Archaeological work

The Archaeological Survey of India had performed conservation and restoration of Buddhas of Bamiyan, Khwaj Parsa’s Mosque at Balkh and the shrine of Khwaja Abu Naser under R. Sen Gupta and Lal in Afghanistan.[6]

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 (PGW) sites in the Indo‑Gangetic Divide and upper YamunaGanga doab.[5]

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.[6][7] 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.[5][8]

Prof. B. B. Lal has published several books and over 150 research papers and articles in national and international scientific journals.[2][5] 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 (which dried up by 2000 BCE) 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 (in 1500 BCE) and which they also contended had led to the end of the Indus Valley Civilization.[4]

Ayodhya dispute

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."[9]

Legacy

The B. B. Lal Chair at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT, Kanpur) has been established in his honour.[10]

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.[5]

Honors

  • It is true that the Rigveda does not provide us details of the inner layout of these forts, but surely the text was not meant to be a treatise on Vastusastra. May it be remembered that it is essentially a compilation of prayers to gods and should be looked at as such. All the evidence that it provides regarding the material culture of the then people is only incidental.
    • Aryan invasion of India: perpetuation of a myth, In: Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History. — 1st ed. — London: Routledge, 2005. p.67.

Personal life

Lal continues to live in Delhi.[4] His son Vrajesh Lal is a businessman based in the United States.[2]

Works

Wikipedia bias and defamation

Wikipedia user Kautilya3 [archive] says [1] [archive] about bias on the wikipedia articles:

Joshua Jonathan, I am intending to revert this edit [archive] of yours, which is said to have copied content from the B. B. Lal page. I find it full of polemics and innuendo and short on substance. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:08, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

I object; it also changed the structure of the article. What exactly do you find "full of polemics"? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:07, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
The very section title "Lal's pillars (1990)" smacks of a partisan attack. And what is the first sentence saying? Why such WP:CITEKILL, without even saying what the "controversial stance" is? What does this have to do with archaeology of Ayodhya anyway?
Multiple "historians" are supposed to have criticised it. Well, historians are not archaeologists. All these historians had a chance to testify in the Allahabad High Court and their testimonies fell apart under cross-examinations. Here [archive] is a sample of what happened in the court.
Most citations are missing urls or miss page numbers etc. (This is characteristic of POV pushers.) The ones I checked are hardly authentic. Kristin Romey [archive] is hardly a scholar. She is at best a scientific journalist. Brian Hole [archive] apparently did a PhD on this dispute and went off to doing something else. He cites a key publication (Lal 2001)[13] but then ignores everything that was revealed in it. Romey doesn't even cite it. She isn't aware of it at all.
Whatever might be our predelictions, there are clearly two camps: pro-Masjid and pro-Mandir. No THIRDPARTY scholars have managed to interrogate the two sides the way Allahabd High Court managed to do. So we can't ignore the Court judgement. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:27, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 B. B. Lal [archive]
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 B. B. Lal Chair at IIT Kanpur [archive], Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur website.
  3. 'Let not the 19th century paradigms continue to haunt us!' [archive], Inaugural Address delivered at the 19th International Conference on South Asian Archaeology at University of Bologna, Ravenna, Italy on 2–6 July 2007, online link [archive], archaeologyonline.net
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "Archaeologist B.B. Lal talks about his book 'The Saraswati Flows On' : Books" [archive]. India Today. 12 November 2001. Retrieved 2013-08-09.
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Book review by Dr. V. N. Misra [archive], 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)
  6. 6.0 6.1 Archaeological endeavours abroad [archive], Archaeological Survey of India Official website.
  7. 7.0 7.1 Abstract [archive], A comparison of Fulani and Nadar HLA, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  8. "I found pillar bases back in mid-seventies: Prof Lal" [archive]. Indian Express. Retrieved 2013-08-09.
  9. "Ayodhya: High Court relies on ASI's 2003 report" [archive]. Economic Times. Oct 1, 2010. Retrieved 2013-08-09.
  10. "Faculty Chairs" [archive]. IIT Kanpur. Retrieved 2013-08-09.
  11. "Padma Awards Directory (1954–2009)" [archive] (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs. Archived from the original [archive] (PDF) on 10 May 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (help)
  12. 12.0 12.1 Memoirs [archive], On Excavations, Indus Seals, Art, Structural and Chemical Conservation of Monumets, Archaeological Survey of India Official website.
  13. Lal, B. B. (2003), "A note on the excavation at Ayodhya with reference to the Mandir-Masjid issue", in Layton, Robert; Thomas, Julian (eds.), Destruction and Conservation of Cultural Property [archive], Routledge, pp. 117–126, ISBN 9781134604982
Well, then clean-up that section. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 16:02, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
It is a waste of time. All the stuff copied from the B. B. Lal page is crap. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:05, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Brian Hole

Brian Hole writes here [archive]: "Template:FormattingError"

So you would think, "brilliant, here is somebody who knows archaeology and he is examining identity politics". But, as far as Ayodhya is concerned, I don't see him having done any new investigation other than what has already been published in various places. (UCL thesis [archive]). For example, B. B. Lal had said repeatedly that his funding was cut off and he could't complete the report of his excavations. Obviously, it was cut off by the "nation state". You would think a scholar investigating the issue would try to find out why it was cut off, who did it and for what reason. No such luck!

So when he says "Template:FormattingError", it is just idle speculation and hardly based on any facts. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:59, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Another interesting comment: "Template:FormattingError" (p. 84)
Kishore Kunal writes that, when he was the special officer for coordinating the VHP-BMAC negotiations, the BMAC historians requested the archaeological materials. The Director General of ASI wrote back,
Template:FormattingError
So Lal is being blamed for the decisions being made by the "highest level", whoever it is. And a scholar who claims to be an advocate of "public archaeology" has no interest in these matters! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:04, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

References

See also

References

Bibliography

External links


https://www.firstpost.com/opinion-news-expert-views-news-analysis-firstpost-viewpoint/prof-bb-lal-how-the-dean-of-indian-archaeology-dug-out-truth-on-ait-and-ayodhya-temple-11254131.html [archive]

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/prof-bb-lal-dug-up-distorted-past-freed-ram-temple-from-communist-grip-and-proved-the-historicity-of-epics/ar-AA11Fn2q [archive]

https://www.hinduismtoday.com/magazine/january-february-march-2016/2016-01-book-review-the-rig-vedic-people-were-indigenous-to-india-not-invaders/ [archive]

https://asc.iitgn.ac.in/assets/publications/book_chapters/Professor_BB_Lal_Legacy_Michel_Danino_2018.pdf [archive]

https://draupaditrust.org/images/felicitating%20an%20archaeological%20legend%20Prof%20B.B.Lal%20Content.pdf [archive]

https://www.scribd.com/doc/190988111/Can-the-Vedic-People-Be-Identified-Archaeologically-by-B-B-LAL [archive]