Abstract
In this work, we propose a character segmentation system from ancient palm leaf manuscripts written in ancient Arya Ezhuthu(which was popularized as script to write Malayalam from 17thcentury). The automatic recognition of handwritten text from digital images of palm leaves dating back to 10thcentury BC. This can enable context based searching in large volumes of digital document. The subject about document image understanding is to extract and classify individual data meaningfully from palm leaf manuscript. We propose an automatic approach to detecting and identifying the characters. The proposed approach can improve the readability of the document. Text line segmentation is then applied and the characters are extracted.