IIT Roorkee Develops World’s First AI Model to Transliterate Historic Modi Script into Devanagari
IIT Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India July 18th, 2025: In a landmark initiative that bridges India’s rich historical legacy with the transformative power of artificial intelligence, the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee) has co-developed the world’s first AI framework for transliterating the historic Modi script into Devanagari. Leveraging a Vision-Language Model (VLM) architecture, the model MoScNet offers a powerful tool for preserving medieval manuscripts and supporting large-scale digitization under initiatives like Digital India and Bhashini.
The project, titled Historic Scripts to Modern Vision, introduces MoDeTrans, the first dataset of its kind, featuring over 2,000 images of real Modi script manuscripts spanning three historical eras: Shivakalin, Peshwekalin, and Anglakalin, along with expert-verified Devanagari transliterations. The AI model MoScNet, led by Prof. Sparsh Mittal of IIT Roorkee, significantly outperforms existing OCR models and offers a scalable, lightweight solution ideal for deployment in low-resource environments.
The research team also included contributions from students, Harshal and Tanvi, who pursued their studies at COEP Technological University (formerly College of Engineering, Pune) and Onkar, an alumnus of Vishwakarma Institute of Information Technology, Pune. Their collaborative efforts played a key role in developing and refining the transliteration framework.
Prof. Kamal Kishore Pant, Director, IIT Roorkee, said, “This work shows how we can harness the power of AI not just for automation, but to revive our cultural heritage, empower academic research, and drive nation-building. It captures the true spirit of Viksit Bharat, preserving India’s timeless wisdom and making it accessible to the world through technology.”
With over 40 million Modi script documents spread across India, including land records, Ayurveda manuscripts, and medieval science texts, the initiative addresses a massive gap in academic and archival research. Given the limited number of Modi script experts and the deteriorating condition of these records, this transliteration technology brings unprecedented efficiency and accessibility to heritage preservation.
Prof. Sparsh Mittal, Principal Investigator, added, “We aim to democratize access to India’s ancient knowledge using open-source, scalable, and ethically trained AI tools. We’ve built a transliteration engine and set the foundation for future AI research in Indic scripts and multilingual learning.”
The project aims to preserve India’s medieval knowledge through AI-assisted digitization, while simultaneously developing scalable, open-source tools for historians, researchers, and government archives. By enabling future integration with national platforms such as BharatGPT and Bhashini, the model supports multilingual AI capabilities and enhances access to India’s cultural assets. This contributes to key national missions including Digital India, Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, and the National Language Translation Mission (NLTM). It also aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11.4: “Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage.” Furthermore, this AI framework holds the potential to be adapted for other endangered or ancient scripts globally, offering a replicable model for historical digitization across cultures.
This project exemplifies IIT Roorkee’s commitment to innovative, inclusive, and impactful research, bridging the past with the future through responsible technology. The team has open-sourced the MoDeTrans dataset and MoScNet model on Hugging Face, ensuring global accessibility and encouraging community-driven innovation.