Narada tells how Brahma summoned Vishvakarma to make a maiden of matchless beauty from minute portions of every gem, whence her name Tilottama. As she circled the gods, Shiva grew faces on four sides and Indra a thousand eyes. She was sent to make the Asura brothers quarrel.
The Mahabharata, tr. K. M. Ganguli (1883-96), sections read for the Vedic layer § adi.213
Sources: The Mahabharata, tr. K. M. Ganguli (1883-96), sections read for the Vedic layer
The generous asura king Bali grants a dwarf brahmin three paces of land; two strides cover heaven and earth, Bali offers his own head for the third and is sent to rule Sutala with Vishnu as his doorkeeper.
The Sudarshana is either Shiva's gift at Kashi after Vishnu offers his own eye in place of a missing lotus, or Vishvakarma's work from the radiance shaved off the sun.
King Indradyumna's priest finds Nila Madhava worshipped by a Sabara chief; the image vanishes; new images are carved from a sea-borne log and left unfinished when the carver is disturbed.
Rigveda 10.81-82 ask who made the world and from what wood; the Brahmanas tell of King Vishvakarman Bhauvana, whose gift of the earth the Earth refused.
Indra will not let Vishvakarma stop building his palace until Vishnu, as a boy, shows him a column of ants that were each once an Indra.
An old carpenter carves the images of Jagannath from the log behind a closed door; in Puri's tradition the door is opened early and the images stay unfinished.
How and when Vishvakarma is worshipped: the solar date in Bengal and the east, the day after Diwali elsewhere, and the craft communities who trace themselves to his five sons.
The Ramayana's Uttara Kanda says Vishvakarma built golden Lanka on Mount Trikuta at Indra's command and gave it first to three Rakshasa brothers; later it passed to Kubera.