Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Ponnani, Kerala, India
About M. G. S. Narayanan
- Muttayil Govindamenon Sankara Narayanan, commonly known as M.
- G.
- S.
- Narayanan (born on 20 August 1932) is an Indian historian, academic and political commentator.
- He headed the Department of History at Calicut University (Kerala) from 1976 to 1990.
- He writes and appears in magazines and popular media regularly.
- He is generally considered as "one of India’s top authorities on ancient history".M.
- G.
- S.
- is among the few southern Indian historians known nationally and internationally.
- He is a scholar of southern Indian history, Kerala history, in particular.
- He is also a specialist in ancient Indian history.
- M.
- G.
- S.
- studied ancient Indian scripts (like Brahmi, Vatteluttu and Grantha) and is well versed in Tamil and Classical Sanskrit.
- He participated as observer in archaeological excavations at Kodungallur, Kerala (1969–70).
- He has also discovered and published several medieval Vatteluttu inscriptions mentioning the Cheras of Kodungallur.
- He was Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellow, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1974 –75); Visiting Fellow, Universities of Moscow and Leningrad (1991); Visiting Research Professor, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo (1994–95).
- He served as the First Member Secretary (1990–92) and as the Chairman (2001–03) of the Indian Council of Historical Research.Perumals of Kerala (1972) – often touted as M.
- G.
- S's masterpiece – is considered a landmark in historiography of Kerala.
- The appendix to the 1972 doctoral thesis, called "Index to Chera inscriptions", was hailed by A.
- L.
- Basham as "a contribution to knowledge more valuable than many PhD theses".
- The "Brahman oligarchy model", constructed by M.
- G.
- S.
- through his study of the Kodungallur Cheras, is a widely recognised state formation model falling outside the standard models of state formation in medieval southern India.M.
- G.
- S.
- is said to have spend a night alone at Cheraman Parambu (Kodungallur), the location of the legendary palace complex of the Cheras, during his research on these line of rulers.
- He has "accidentally" discovered and published a fragmentary label inscription of Maurya ruler Bindusara from Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh.
- In April, 2018 M.
- G.
- S.
- handed over his private library to the Department of History, University of Calicut.
- The autobiography of M.
- G.
- S.
- was published by Current Books in December, 2018.
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