The robes of Buddha

At one of the temples we visited in Ayuthaya, we saw an interesting ceremony taking place. The Thais were all paying to collect silver trays, each of which held a huge swathe of saffron material. They then took it in turn to hand their trays to a man at the foot of the Buddha statue, who took the cloth and threw it up over his shoulder into Buddha's lap. A group of men standing in the lap (as shown in the picture here) would then attach one end of the cloth to a pulley that hoisted it over Buddha's left shoulder. Once a sufficient number of cloths had been hoisted, the loose ends were thrown out across the room, and the congregation huddled underneath the material to pray.