Erudite academic with Afghan possibly in Bow (8)
I believe the answer is:
profound
'erudite' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'academic with afghan possibly in bow' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'academic' could be 'prof' (short for professor) and 'prof' is located in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for profound that I've seen before include "Extensive" , "Showing great insight" , "Needing deep thought" , "Deep; intense" , "unqualified" .)