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Professor Awadh Kishore Narain was an Indian historian, numismatist and archaeologist, who has published and lectured extensively on the subjects related to South and Central Asia. He is well known for his book, The Indo Greeks, published by Oxford University Press in 1956, in which he discussed the thesis of British historian Sir William Woodthorpe Tarn.
His later research was about the history of peoples of Central Asia who followed the Indo-Greeks, e.g. the Indo–Scythians, Indo–Parthians and the Yue Zhi-Kushans. He organized an international conference in London on the problem of the date of Kanishka. He continued working on the history of these people, their movements and interactions in the context of South and Central Asia as is evident from several of his articles and lectures. More recently, he was working on a multi-volume project entitled From Kurush to Kanishka, several volumes of which are ready for publication. Two other areas of A.K.’s interest have been Historiography and Buddhist Studies.
Professor Narain, was born in 1925 at Gaya in Bihar, India and died on July 10, 2013 in Varanasi, India that has been his home for most of his adult life. In 1947 he was awarded a Post Graduate Degree in Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology from Banaras Hindu University securing the first position in the University and claiming the Dayaram Sahni Gold Medal. He earned his Ph.D. degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1954.
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