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 Indiaβs 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 (1969β70).
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 β75); Visiting Fellow, Universities of Moscow and Leningrad (1991); Visiting Research Professor, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo (1994β95).
He served as the First Member Secretary (1990β92) and as the Chairman (2001β03) of the Indian Council of Historical Research.Perumals of Kerala (1972) β often touted as M.
G.
S's masterpiece β 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.