The Nilamata Purana describes the Valley's origin from the waters, a fact corroborated by prominent geologists, and shows how the very name of the land was derived from the process of desiccation - Ka means "water" and Shimir means "to desiccate". Hence, Kashmir stands for "a land desiccated from water". There is also a theory which takes Kashmir to be a contraction of Kashyap-mira or Kashyapmir or Kashyapmeru, the ""Sea or Mountain of Kashyapa"", the sage who is credited with having drained the waters of the primordial Lake Satisar, that Kashmir was before it was reclaimed. The Nilamata Purana gives the name Kashmira to the (Kashmir Valley includes the Wular Lake) Mira" which means the sea lake or the mountain of Sage Kashyapa. Mira in Sanskrit means Ocean or boundary, considering it to be an embodiment of Uma and it is the Kashmir that the world knows today. The Kashmiris, however, call it "Kashir", which has been derived phonetically from Kashmir. The Ancient Greeks called it as "Kasperia". Kashyapa-pura, which has been identified with Kaspapyros of Hecataeus (apud Stephanus of Byzantium) and Kaspatyros of Herodotus (3.102, 4.44); In classical literature Herodotus also called it "Kaspatyrol". Kashmir is also believed to be the country meant by Ptolemy's Kaspeiria. Xuanzang, the Chinese monk who visited Kashmir in 631 AD called it "Kia-shi-mi-lo", the Tibetans called it Khachal, meaning "snowy mountain". It is and has been a land of rivers, lakes and wildflowers. "Cashmere" is an archaic spelling of present-Kashmir, and in some countries it is still spelled this way. A tribe of Semitic origin, named Kash (which means a deep slash in the native dialect), is believed to have founded the cities of Kashan and Kashgar, not to be confused with the Kashyapi tribe from Caspian. The land and the people were known as 'Kashir' from which 'Kashmir' was also derived from therein.