Handwritten MODI Characters

“MODI lipi” is one of the scripts used to write religious scriptures of Maharashtra in Western India and it was also the official script for the Maratha administration from the 17th century to the middle of the 20th century. This cultural treasure, “MODI-manuscript,” speaks about the history of its time. Although it has immense importance as a source of inspiration and information to the present generation, very few people know this “lipi”. MODI was used for 700 years in Maharashtra for writing in ‘Marathi’. There are millions of historical documents are available in The State Archive Department Pune and various places of India. Very few MODI experts are there who can read those documents. Therefore, a system must be developed for recognition of ‘MODI’. To develop such a system, handwritten character image samples are required. So, we have collected and created handwritten MODI character dataset. The complete dataset included 46 classes (characters), namely 10 vowels and 36 consonants.