QUOTE : As the Hindu gods are ‘immortal’ only in a very particular sense – for they are born, and they die – they experience most of the great human dilemmas and often seem to differ from mortals only in a few trivial details (gods do not sweat or blink, for example) and from demons even less. Yet they are regarded by the Hindus as a class of beings by definition totally different from any other; they are symbols in a way that no human being, however ‘archetypal’ his life story, can ever be. They are actors playing parts that are real only for us; they are the masks behind which we see our own faces.