Braj Basi Lal (born in
Jhansi, India in
1921), more 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 President of the World Archaeological Congress. He also worked in for
UNESCO committees. He received the
Padma Bhushan by the
Government of India in
2000.
He has done excavations in the
Indus Valley Civilization with
Mortimer Wheeler and other archaeologists. He has had an archaeological career spanning more than half‑a‑century. He was trained in excavation by the veteran archaeologist, Wheeler at
Taxila,
Harappa and other famous sites in the forties of the last century. Out of his many pupils Wheeler chose Lal to entrust the excavation of the Early Historic site of
Sisupalgarh in
Orissa before relinquishing the charge of the Director‑General of Archaeology in India in
1947.
The British archaeologists,
Stuart Piggott and D.H. Gordon, in their reviews of B. B. Lal’s classic article on the
Copper Hoards of the Gangetic basin (Piggott 1954), and his
Hastinapura excavation report (Gordon 1957), both published in
Ancient India, the annual journal of the Archaeological Survey of India, hailed them as models of research and excavation reporting. In subsequent years Lal excavated the Mesolithic site of
Birbhanpur in
West Bengal, the
Chalcolithic site of
Gilund and the Harappan site of
Kalibangan, both in
Rajasthan, and the
Ramayana sites of
Ayodhya,
Bharadwaj Ashram, Nandigram,
Chitrakut and
Shringaverapura in
Uttar Pradesh.
In 2000, the President of the Indian Republic conferred upon him the title of
Padmabhushan.
Works
- The Earliest Civilization of South Asia (1997)
- India 1947-1997: New Light on the Indus Civilization (1998)
- Lal, B.B., (1984) Frontiers of the Indus Civilization.1984.
- Lal, B.B. 2005. The Homeland of the Aryans. Evidence of Rigvedic Flora and Fauna & Archaeology, New Delhi, Aryan Books International.
- Lal, B.B. 2002. The Saraswati Flows on: the Continuity of Indian Culture. New Delhi: Aryan Books International
