The communal name of Viswakarma is of fairly recent usage. The British Raj misunderstood the Indian caste system as being an inflexible concept based on varna, ignoring all evidence of caste creation and disintegration caused by processes of social fission and fusion. This flawed interpretation, formed in part by heeding the work of Brahmin scholars, resulted in many communities aspiring to official recognition of a higher social status than was traditional, based on claims of descent from elite groups such as the Brahmins or Kshatriyas.
Among the changes that occurred during this period, the census administrator John Henry Hutton recorded in 1931 a caste called the Viswakarma, which was an administrative creation defined as a community of artisans who were geographically disparate but shared fairly similar occupations. Like the similarly-created Yadavs, who were an administrative grouping of grazers, herders and dairymen, the Viswakarma comprised numerous previously diverse castes.
The community prefer the new name, which has evidential support in 12th-century inscriptions that refer to smiths and sculptors belonging to the Viswakarma kula, although Vijaya Ramaswamy notes that "... the Viswakarma community is obviously cutting across caste lines" and "... comprises five socially and economically differentiated jatis".
Prior to the Raj period, these communities were referred to names such as Kammalar in present-day Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Panchalar in Karnataka and Panchanamuvaru in Andhra Pradesh, while there are also medieval inscriptions that refer to them as the Rathakarar and Kammala-Rathakarar.
Hindu scriptures describe many of Viswakarma's architectural accomplishments.
Through the four yugas (aeons of Hindu mythology), he had built several towns and temples for the gods. Among them were, in chronological order, Svarga (Heaven) in the Satya Yuga, Lanka in the treta Yuga, and Dwarka (Krishna's capital) in the dwapara Yuga.
The Lord of Architecture is also supposed to have built the three deities Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra, Goddess Subhadra along with Sudarshana Chakra in the Shreekshretra Jagannath Temple
Viswakarma is said to have built the Pushpaka Vimana , Trishul , Sudarshana Chakra, Vajra Aayudham.