Skolotājam, literātam un tulkotājam, grāmatizdevējam, kartogrāfam un etnogrāfam Matīsam Siliņam — 150

Matīss Siliņš was a well-educated man with extremely extensive knowledge. He had good command of German, Latin, and Ancient Greek, and also strived to master Sanskrit in order to be able to read ancient Indian literature. At the age of 59, M. Siliņš enrolled at the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy of the newly founded University of Latvia, where he studied history and languages, since he considered that his knowledge were not yet sufficiently good. During his whole life M. Siliņš carefully followed the newest research in history, ethnography, cartography, linguistics and other branches of science. Jānis Kreicbergs, a lawyer and active public and cultural worker, wrote in 1936, in the newspaper Jēkabpils Vēstnesis that Siliņš bore some Faustian discontent with his achievements and that he strived to investigate deep in the darkness of Latvian ancient culture. The aim of his work was studying the Latvian history, uncover its secrets, solve complicated puzzles, for example, concerning the origins of the Latvian people, about its prehistoric times before arriving and settling on the coast of the Baltic Sea, about the ancient culture and social structure of our ancestors. Matīss Siliņš followed three great passions in his life, three „muses” that he followed urged by unquenchable curiosity. One of these was geography, the other one — history, and the third — linguistics. Therefore, M. Siliņš’ research is multiform, very careful, even niggling. In his researches and his maps he strived to include possibly more information and open a wider view of the object under investigation to the reader. Currently this approach would be called interdisciplinary research, since both the folklore materials and samples of ancient cultures were used as the comparative material.