[INDOLOGY] "Psychological complexity" of Sanskrit language/literature

[Gleb Sharygin]

Dear learned members of the List,

I wonder if someone might be able to help me find any well-done linguistic
or psychological quantitative study of the psychological "dimension" of
Sanskrit language/literature. By "Sanskrit" here I mean all
classical/ancient Indo-Aryan languages of India, including Prakrits.

It is intuitively obvious to me that Sanskrit is an immensely
psychologically rich language, and an extremely psychologically
sophisticated tradition of literature. As C. G. Jung and C. A. F. Rhys
Davids put it:

"But what we have to show in the way of spiritual insight and psychological
technique must seem, when compared with *yoga*, just as backward as Eastern
astrology and medicine when compared with Western science". (C. G. Jung in
his "psychological commentary" in "The Tibetan Book of Great Liberation"
(W.Y. Evans-Wentz. Oxford University Press, London, 1954))

"Even a superficial inspection of the Manual should yield great promise to
anyone interested in the history of psychology. When in the year 1893 my
attention was first drawn to it..., I was at once attracted by the amount
of psychological material embedded in its pages". (C. A. F. Rhys Davids in
the preface to her pioneering translation of the Dhammasaṅgaṇī, tr. "A
Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics" (Pali Text Society, Oxford, 1900).

But I struggle to find any well methodologically done study, that would
quantitatively measure or assess that.

I dimly remember the study that I read some 15 years ago by an Indian
scholar by the last name Basu (or Vasu), that estimated that Sanskrit has
about 30-40% more psychologically relevant terms/words, than classical
languages (i.e. Greek and Latin), and 80% more than modern European
languages.

But all my attempts at finding that study failed. I would be very grateful
if someone helped me to identify that study or suggested something recent
and authoritative on the subject. I would be grateful for any comments as
well.

Kind regards,
Gleb Sharygin
PhD Candidate
Institut fur Indologie und Tibetologie
LMU München


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