In plain words
Even among the very greatest scholars, only a small handful can determine the period in which the Purāṇas were composed. The Purāṇas were written in the language that the common people of that time used in their daily speech — that is the very language we today call 'modern Sanskrit'. This language was intended not merely for the learned scholars of that age, but for ordinary people as well; and it was for that reason that its meaning and content were given shape in that very language. The lives of great persons, kings and other renowned figures, the historically significant events of the nation's life, and other such tangible forms — all these were presented in that language, so that the sanātana Dharma of the Hindu religion might be illustrated through living examples: it was in this manner that the great ṛṣis composed the Purāṇas.
All the texts just mentioned, taken together, are called the Hindu scriptures. Given that, for so many thousands of years, people devoted the greater part of their strength to the enquiry into philosophical and spiritual matters, and thereby built up such a vast and boundless body of scriptural literature, it is hardly surprising that so many sub-schools should have arisen among the people and within the community. Besides all of these, there is no shortage, even now, of thousands upon thousands of further sub-schools, and in certain matters these sub-schools differ enormously from one another. We do not, at present, have the time to grasp every difference between them, or every distinct spiritual notion each one contains; we must therefore come to know those notions on which all of them agree, and those tenets which underlie every one of them as their common root — that is, whatever every Hindu must, without fail, accept and believe. 'What is the substance that causes creation? What underlies it as its cause?' — this question is the most fundamental problem, not for Bharatiyas alone, but for every human being capable of thought. For, after all, neither an effect without a cause, nor a supported thing without any support, exists anywhere in this world!