'Why, Nawab Sahib, I would have had him tell us, amongst other
things, of that law which makes this our globe and the other planets
revolve round the sun, and their moons around them. I would have had
him teach us something of the nature of the things we call comets, or
stars with large tails, and of that of the fixed stars, which we
suppose to be suns, like our sun, with planets revolving round them
like ours, since it is clear that they do not borrow their light from
our sun, nor from anything that we can discover in the heavens. I
would also have had him tell us the nature of that white belt which
crosses the sky, which you call the ovarious belt, "Khatt-i-abyaz",
and we the milky-way, and which we consider to be a collection of
self-lighted stars, while many orthodox but unlettered Musalmans
think it the marks made in the sky by "Borak", the rough-shod donkey,
on which your prophet rode from Jerusalem to heaven. And you think,
Nawab Sahib, that there was quite evidence enough to satisfy any
person whose heart had not been hardened to unbelief? and that no
description of the heavenly bodies, or of the laws which govern their
motion, could have had any influence on the minds of such people?
'[65]

'Assuredly I do, sir! Has not God said, "If we should open a gate in
the heavens above them, and they should ascend thereto all the day
long, they would surely say, our eyes are only dazzled, or rather we
are a people deluded by enchantments."[66] Do you think, sir, that
anything which his majesty Moses could have said about the planets,
and the comets, and the milky way, would have tended so much to
persuade the children of Israel of his divine mission as did the
single stroke of his rod, which brought a river of delicious water
gushing from a dry rock when they were all dying from thirst? When
our holy prophet', continued the Nawab (placing the points of the
four fingers of his right hand on the table), 'placed his blessed
hand thus on the ground, and caused four streams to gush out from the
dug plain, and supply with fresh water the whole army which was
perishing from thirst; and when out of only _five small dates_ he
afterwards feasted this immense army till they could eat no more, he
surely did more to convince his followers of his divine mission than
he could have done by any discourse about the planets, and the milky
way (Khatt-i-abyaz).'

'No doubt, Nawab Sahib, these were very powerful arguments for those
who