Phrakhru Pitak added a new twist to this ceremony. Several nurseries around the
provincial capital and some wealthy patrons offered 12,000 seedlings to the monks.
Along with the donation of seedlings, there were several other innovations. The
villagers paraded their offerings in three groups, representing the three subdistricts
in which the ten participating villages belonged. While they carried model trees with
simple offerings of money and necessities, they did not dance, drink, or play the
traditional music that usually accompanies a phaa paa parade (Darlington 1990: 132-
37). Rather, each of the three groups performed skits they had prepared which
presented their ideas of conserving the forest. Two were straightforward; for
example, one group pantomimed planting seedlings. The most dramatic of the three
included political commentary. The villagers acted out an incident of the forest being
cut down, passing the blame from the minority hill people, to the northern Thai
villagers, until it finally settled on 'the government for not protecting the forest. The
political debate concerning forest conservation and the economic interests involved
in its destruction underlies all conservation activities. 6 It is unusual, however, for
these issues to be brought so openly to the surface, especially during a Buddhist
ritual. All three skits emphasized the urgent need for the villagers to conserve the
forest.