Vishvakarman, the maker of everything, and the king who gave away the earth
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.
Two hymns of the tenth book address Vishvakarman as father, seer and priest who offered all existing things, the one god with eyes, face, arms and feet on all sides who welds earth and heaven together with arms and wings. The poet asks what he stood on and what wood the worlds were cut from, names him the gods' name-giver, speaks of the first seed in the waters on the navel of the Unborn, and ends by saying the chanters will not find him.
Shatapatha Brahmana 13.7.1 and Aitareya Brahmana 8.21
Pan-IndiaAll traditions
Vishvakarman Bhauvana, anointed by Kashyapa with Indra's great anointing, conquered the earth and offered the horse sacrifice. He performed the ten-day Sarvamedha, first offered by the Self-existent, in which everything is given and the land is divided among the priests. He 'overpassed all beings and became everything here'. The Earth sang that no mortal may give her away, that he was foolish, that she would sink into the waters and his promise to Kashyapa was vain.
What is different here:
A human king and a ritual precedent in place of a cosmic maker; adds the Earth's protest.
Later texts make Vishvakarma the gods' craftsman: son of the Vasu Prabhasa and Brihaspati's sister, master of a thousand arts (Vishnu Purana 1.15); builder of Lanka (Ramayana, Uttara 3 and 5), of Yama's hall (Mahabharata, Sabha 8) and of Dvaraka by his science (Bhagavata 10.50); maker of Tilottama (Adi 213); father of Sanjna, who trims the Sun and makes the gods' weapons from the filings (Vishnu Purana 3.2); father of the monkey Nala (Ramayana, Yuddha 22).
What is different here:
A named craftsman with a family, clients and a workshop; none of this is in the Vedic hymns.
Sources: Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer; The Satapatha-Brahmana, tr. Julius Eggeling (Sacred Books of the East 12, 41); Rigveda Brahmanas: the Aitareya and Kausitaki Brahmanas, tr. A. B. Keith (1920); The Vishnu Purana, tr. H. H. Wilson (1840); The Ramayana of Valmiki, tr. Hari Prasad Shastri (1952-59), Uttara Kanda (wisdomlib.org); The Mahabharata, tr. K. M. Ganguli (1883-96), sections read for the Vedic layer; Srimad-Bhagavatam (Bhaktivedanta Vedabase); The Ramayan of Valmiki, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1870-74)