Shri Krishna Deva (b. 1914), Retired Director, Archaeological Survey of India, is an eminent scholar of Indian art, architecture and archaeology. He assisted the famous explorer Sir Aurel Stein in his archaeological explorations in Rajasthan, Bahawalpur and Baluchistan in 1940 and 1941 and was a member of Mr. N.G. Majumdar’s team during his momentous but tragic explorations in Sind in 1938. He conducted excavations at Rajghat (Varanasi) in 1940, at Nagar near Jaipur in 1943, at Vaishali in 1950 and at Kumrahar (Pataliputra) in 1951-52. He was also actively associated with Sit Mrotimer Wheeler’s excavations in India between 1944 and 1947 and classified and reported on the pottery from Taxila, Arikamedu and Harappa, which set a pattern for subsequent pottery reports in India. Since 1955 he has specialized in Indian art, architecture and iconography and, having organised the Temple Survey Project (North Region) of the Archaeological Survey of India, he conducted a systematic architectural survey of the temples of North India in general and Central India in particular from 1956 to 1962. He was also deputed by graphical and sculptural survey of the images of Nepal.
On retirement form Archaeological Survey of India he worked successively as Archaeological Adviser to his Majesty’s Government in Nepal and Director, Birla Academy of Art and Culture and for good 12 years as Consultant to American Institute of Indian Studies, Varanasi, for their project on Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture of which he has been one of the principal contributors. He is widely travelled and has participated in many Indian and International Seminars on Indian Art and Archaeology and presided over the Technical Arts Section of the all India Oriental Conference held in Srinagar in 1961.
He is editor of the Journal of Indian Society of Oriental Art and is author of numerous research papers and books including Temples of North India, Images in Nepal, Vaisali Excavations, and Temples of Khajuraho.