Antique Illustrated Balinese Lontar Palm Leaf Manuscript

We’d love an Asian historian to get this piece. This fascinating find has nine palm leave pages illustrated horizontally, depicting a tale which we believe is from the Ramayana, the Hindu epic, or a Buddhist narrative. We could not identify which story the illustrations are associated with. Perhaps a scholar could do better…
 
Illustrated palm leaf manuscripts were used before paper. The pages are dried and treated palm leaves pierced with holes and bound with a cord between protective wood ‘covers’, secured with a ‘coin’, making them easy to travel with and store. Most of the ones we found online were covered in text, which we understand are Buddhist sutras, commentaries, religious and astrological texts. Ours are illustrated with only minimal text in what could be Pali, Balinese or old Indonesian. It is also possible ours is Burmese in origin but we think not as we found very similar ones purchased in Bali and Indonesia in the 1960s-1970s online.
 
Text and illustrations are created by the use of incisions using a dull knife with charcoal or ink then rubbed over the leaf and wiped off. 
 
We believe our grandmother or the Burr sisters would have purchased this as vintage or antique in 1935 when they visited on a world tour.
 
Ours has nine ‘pages’, the first of which is missing 1/3 of the page. Ours are blank on the back, but for two with text in light lettering. We were unable to translate the text.
 
This item is rare. The binding is intact, although we suspect a second coin was attached to the binding originally and the cord may have been longer than it is now. (Most of those we found online were able to photograph all pages at one time, but our cord only allows us to show maximum five pages at a time.) The pages have no mold, minimal warping, cracks, or other damage beyond the one page torn as shown in photos.
 
L 14 3/8” x H 1” x D 1 1/2” 
 
Disclaimer: We have tried to make sure colors shown in photos are representative of the real colors of each item. We have tried to identify all imperfections in descriptions, but we may have missed some. If you are unhappy with your purchase, let us know.