This brass statue carved with sensitive details, a most accomplished image, represents Vishvakarma Ji, one of the primary divinities that preceded Creation. As the terms ‘Vishva’ and ‘karma’, when combined, literally mean the doer of the universe, Vishvakarma is the creator of the cosmos, that is, all that is manifest as also all that is not manifest, even what is said, heard, thought or felt. In the Rig-Veda, Vishvakarma has been perceived as the ultimate reality, and his navel wherefrom all things emanate as Hiranyagarbha – the golden egg. As a matter of fact, the Puranic Padmanabha imagery of Lord Vishnu: a lotus with Brahman mounting it rising from his navel, is largely influenced by this Rig-Vedic Hiranyagarbha form of Vishvakarma.
Thus, while on one hand the Rig-Veda visualizes Vishvakarma as Omnipotence and the abstract form of the creator God personified, on the other, it perceives him as the deity presiding over all craftsmen and architects, and sometimes as the Principal Architect of the Universe. Later, it was on this Rig-Vedic dual visualization of Vishvakarma that there emerged the Upanishadic concept of Brahman, as also that of Purusha who is Sadashiva, One who creates and creates out of Him, Himself the Creator as also the matter to create out of. Hence, while in later mythology Vishvakarma and Brahma merged into one divinity and emerged as one of the Trinity Gods in many traditions Vishvakarma was one of Brahma’s aspects that Brahma deployed to create as when in the Mahabharata Vishvakarma was put to build the Pandavas’ new capital Indraprastha ; obviously, he was treated as the divinity that worked by deployment, a status subordinate to a Trinity God.
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