B. B. Lal

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Braj Basi Lal (born in Jhansi, India in 1921) is a well-known 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 a spectacularly successful and exemplary 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 eminent 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.

For his academic achievements and the high quality of his scholarship Professor Lal has been honoured by many prestigious institutions in India and abroad. In 2000, the President of the Indian Republic conferred upon him the coveted title of Padmabhushan.

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Prabha Atre

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Prabha Atre (1932, Pune) is an eminent Maharashtrian vocalist of Kirana Gharana classical Indian music.
Prabha was born to Abasaheb and Indirabai Atre. As children, Prabha and her sister, Usha, were interested in music, but neither of them planned to pursue music as a career. When Prabha was eight, Indirabai was not keeping good health, and at a friend's suggestion that classical music lessons would help her feel better, she took a few lessons (before stopping after five lessons). However, listening to those lessons inspired Prabha to learn classical music herself.

Prabha learned classical music first from Pandit Sureshbabu Mane, and after his demise in 1952, from Smt. Hirabai Badodekar. Both Sureshbabu and Hirabai were children and disciples of Ustad Abdul Karim Khan. While studying under Hirabai, Prabha accompanied her on her musical concert tours in different parts of India, and thus got exposure to different audiences.

While studying music, Prabha also finished college courses in science and law to receive degrees in both of those disciplines. She later earned a Ph. D. in music too. Her doctoral thesis was titled "Sargam", and pertained to the use of sol-fa notes in Indian classical music.

Awards


In 1976, Prabha received the Acharya Atre Award for music. Jagatguru Shankaracharya conferred on her the title of "Gana Prabha". She received the Sangeet Natak Academy Award in 1991. The Government of India conferred on her Padma Shree in 1990 and Padma Bhushan in 2002. During the first four months of 2002, she received four awards, including Padma Bhushan.