Keletas naujų faktų ir hipotezių dėl Pilypo Ruigio Meletemos (1735) Londone
Some New Facts and Hypotheses on Philipp Ruhig’s Meletema (1735) in London

Summary/Abstract: In the Historical Printed Works Department of the National Library of Warsaw (Biblioteka Narodowa w Warszawie), a letter was found written in 1742 by famous London-based polyglot and native of Klaipėda David Wilkins (1685–1745), addressed to the Prussian General Superintendent Johann Jacob Quandt (1686–1772). It reveals new information about the Meletema – a study of the Lithuanian language by Philipp Ruhig (1675–1749), a priest based in Walterkehmen. The work was sent to London in 1735 but was not published, and the manuscript was not returned; for a long time, it was unknown whether it had even reached the recipient. The first publication of Meletema, including a facsimile, transcription, and translation into Lithuanian, was prepared in 1986 by Vytautas Jurgutis and Valerija Vilnonytė, with translation by Vytautas Jurgutis and Kazys Eigminas. The manuscript is now kept in Vilnius, at the National Museum of Lithuania. Ruhig’s linguistic manuscript was intended to be printed in a multilingual Bible, for which Wilkins was already collecting texts and the necessary typefaces. Wilkins informed his friend Quandt about the project in a 1742 letter, asking him to send studies by Prussian scholars on the origins, dialects, and relationships of four languages – Polish, Muscovite, Estonian, and Latvian – which he planned to include at the beginning of the volume. He wrote that he had already collected biblical texts in 21 European languages and that he already possessed “the dissertation on the Lithuanian language by the famous Mr. Ruhig, a priest from Insterburg, both excellent and learned”. These circumstances raise doubts about whether Ruhig’s Meletema reached London through Quandt. Another source used here is a little-studied Lithuanian poem written by Ruhig and dedicated to Wilkins, which appears at the beginning of Meletema. It reveals that Wilkins learned about Ruhig’s study from his younger brother, Wilhelm Wilcke, a priest in Klaipėda and a friend of Ruhig. The poem confirms the hypotheses that Ruhig sent to London not only the study itself, but also a freshly printed copy of the Lithuanian Bible (1735), and that he was aware of the context in which his research would be published. The multilingual Bible, with linguistic studies in its introduction, was never printed because, as Wilkins writes, after the unexpected death of Thomas Tanner in 1735, he was tasked with completing the Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, the encyclopaedia of English and Irish writers that Tanner had been compiling for 40 years. Afterwards, Wilkins hoped to devote all his energy to his own project. Unfortunately, he was unable to complete either the encyclopaedia or the herculean undertaking that was the multilingual Bible, as the work took a toll on his health and he died in 1745. Ruhig supplemented his 112-page Latin study, translated it into German, and published it as a separate book in Königsberg in 1745 under the title Betrachtung der Littauischen Sprache, in ihrem Ursprunge, Wesen und Eigenschaften. He died in 1749. The Lithuanian Bible printed in Königsberg in 1735 was included in Wilkins’ polyglot project thanks to several fortunate circumstances: the Reformation, which encouraged reading the Bible in one’s native language; Quandt, who provided the first printed Lithuanian Bible; and Ruhig, one of the most important translators of the Bible.

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