Logo

Dr. Devangana Desai was born in 1937 in Bombay. An academic training both in Philosophy and Sociology roused in her a keen interest in the Sociology of Art and Religion. Her Ph.D. dissertation submitted in 1970 to the University of Bombay forms the basis of the present book. She has to her credit a large number of papers on Ancient Indian Terracottas, Temple Art and Architecture, and Ramayana scenes in Indian sculpture. Dr. Desai was awarded the Silver Medal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay (1977) for her contribution to oriental research. She received the Homi Bhabha Fellowship in 1978-1980 and worked on “Narration in Indian Sculpture (upto AD 1300)”. She has participated in several national and international seminars of Art History including the “Discourses on Siva” Symposium convened by the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia in 1981, and the “Destiny of Man” Seminar held during the Festival of India in Britain in 1982. She was awarded the prestigious Dadabhai Naoroji Memorial Prize in 1983 for her research in Indian Art. Dr. Desai is the Editor of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay and Chairman of the Museum Society of Bombay.

Dr. Arundhati Banerji now a Deputy Superintending Archaeologist, joined the Archaeological Survey of India, for Post-graduate training in Archaeology (1972-73). Ever since she takes active interest and participation in all the branches of archaeology. Thought her keenness in the field of Epigraphy and Numismatics of early period, made her to pursue further studies in archaeology, she studied numerous antiquities preserved in different Museums and Central Antiquities Collection of the Survey. Her long association with the Survey, enabled her to study the stylistic evolution of various art forms particularly the terracottas. She was awarded Ph.D. (1990) for her work Terracotta Art of Northern and Western India from c. 2000-e00 B.C. Besides many research papers, she has also contributed articles for “An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology (ed.) A. Ghosh. At present, she is assiduously working for a monograph Terracotta Art of India on which she has already contributed widely in many Research Journals. She has also traveled abroad in connection with the Festival of India, Paris.