Handwritten devanagari manuscript characters recognition using capsnet

•The authors have worked on Devanagari manuscript dataset for character recognition.•The complete dataset was segmented into characters using MicrosoftVoTT and similar characters were grouped in classes.•Monitoring of recognition accuracy based on CapsNet model. Manuscripts serve as a wealth of knowledge for future generations and are a useful source of information for locating material from the Middle Ages. Ancient manuscripts can be found in handwritten form, thus they must be translated into digital form so that computing equipment can access them and additional indexing and search operations can be performed with ease. Manuscript recognition is already possible using a variety of methods. Regional languages like Devanagari, Gurmukhi, Sanskrit, etc., however, have very few methods available. In this study, the Devanagari characters from the manuscripts is recognised using a CapsNet-based method. 33 fundamental characters, 3 conjuncts, and 12 modifiers make up the Devanagari alphabet. The complete dataset is divided into 399 classes for the recognition of basic, modifiers, and conjunct characters. Due to spatial relationship, CapsNet is used to recognize the handwritten characters. The proposed model was run using 10:70, 20:80, and 30:70 as test: train ratio of characters. Also, the number of epochs was varied for better recognition accuracy. The authors observed the best recognition accuracy of 94.6% was achieved to recognize the Devanagari characters using CapsNet.