A Present to His Royal Highness - The Prince of Wales — Page 81
81 men of Arabia to write these books for him and was himself an ignorant man. Thereupon he extended his challenge to the whole world to produce the like of his books in the Arabic language, and in order to demonstrate that his books were no ordinary human compositions, he also proclaimed that if the books written by them were adjudged to be superior compositions than his own, then they would be at liberty to impose upon him any penalty they pleased, and he gave them leave to write books individually or collectively and to call to their aid the divines of Arabia and Syria whose mother tongue was Arabic. Noble Prince! the magnitude of this challenge may be judged thus. Suppose, a Russian who has never visited England, America or any other English-speaking country, nor lived in the society of English-speaking people nor studied English at any University or academy, were to write books in excellent English and were to challenge English-speaking people to produce the like of them, either individually or collectively, and none were to come forward to take up the challenge, would not this be a wonder and a marvel? Yet this was the case with the Promised Messiah. He repeatedly challenged the divines of Arabia, Egypt, Syria and India, but none dared to take up the challenge. Some of them, instead of writing books themselves, affected to find fault with his books, but while doing so they committed such glaring blunders that they earned everlasting disgrace. He even offered large rewards, sometimes as much as ten thousand rupees, to those who would write books in