Amongst the most influential of his European mentors were Professor Wilhelm Geiger, a specialist in Pali and Sinhalese, and Walter Wüst – both of Munich.
In addition to Pali, Sinhalese, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, English, German, Russian, and Hindi, there were those languages he studied 'for enjoyment' – Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Spanish, and Italian.
From 1950 to 1958, he was at Lucknow University, where he developed a deep friendship with Kailas Nath Kaul, a naturalist, ethnologist and philosopher.
The personal and intellectual encounters Günther had in India and the Himalayan region were to leave a lasting mark, for he was fortunate in studying with many prominent Tibetan and Mongolian lamas.
Defenders have argued that because both Buddhist and European philosophies have built up rich vocabularies and conceptual systems derived from over the centuries, any attempt at synthesis is necessarily complicated.