Vishwakarma

Clans and Kinship

Each community of the Vishwakarma group keeps its own marriage circle. Thurston (1909) found the Tamil Kammalans divided into three endogamous territorial groups, Pandya, Chola and Kongu, and into five sections that intermarried, though goldsmiths in towns had ceased to marry with blacksmiths; the five sections had five gotras, each said to have twenty-five subordinate gotras, and among the Pandya Tattans there were also exogamous septs named after places. Each of the five divisions had a headman (Nattamaikkaran) and an executive officer, with an elected head over all five. In the Central Provinces, Russell and Hira Lal (1916) found Barhai exogamous septs named after villages, or in some places only surnames, people of the same surname not marrying; the Lohars had territorial sub-castes.

The five gotras of the Tamil Kammalans and some exogamous septs of the Pandya Tattans, named after places, as Thurston (1909) gives them. Wikipedia names the five sons of Vishwakarma as the gotras of the five branches. No list was found for the northern communities, whose septs Russell and Hira Lal say are named after villages.

In the Official Lists

• Other Backward Class (central list)

  Andhra Pradesh, Telangana

  Wikipedia gives the entry as Viswabrahmin or Viswakarma, with Ausula or Kamsali, Kammari, Kanchari, Vadla or Vadrangi and Silpi; the exact wording was not checked.

The states are those for which Wikipedia cites the central list of the National Commission for Backward Classes (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana). It also says the community is an OBC in Uttar Pradesh, without a citation, and that Tamil Nadu lists the Kammalar among its backward classes. Communities of the Vishwakarma group appear under their own names (Lohar, Barhai, Sutar, Kammalar and others) in many central and state lists, which could not be opened for this check; confirm the current entries.

Checked on 2026-11-07 against the sources below. The lists are amended from time to time and can differ by district; for a certificate, the current order or the state's list is what counts.

Name and Origin

The community's account, as Edgar Thurston (1909) recorded it among the Tamil Kammalans, is that Vishwakarma had five sons, Manu, Maya, Silpa, Tvashtra and Daivagna (Vishvajna), from whom its five branches descend; some used the name Visva Brahman for themselves. Vijaya Ramaswamy, cited on Wikipedia, dates the Vishwakarma Puranam, in which these origin stories were gathered, to the seventeenth or eighteenth century; it tells of the five sons living in a fort of lodestone on the coast of Ilangapuri until an enemy, Karunakaran, learned its secret and scattered them. In north India, William Crooke (1896, quoted by Russell and Hira Lal) found that practically all Lohars traced their origin to Vishwakarma, the later form of the Vedic Tvashtri.

History

Thurston found the Kammalan name already in Tamil poems attributed to Kamban, in the form Kannalan. The historian Vijaya Ramaswamy distinguishes the Vishwakarma craftsmen of the medieval south, who moved with the patronage of temple-building dynasties such as Vijayanagara, from settled village artisans (cited on Wikipedia). In the Central Provinces Russell and Hira Lal counted about 180,000 Lohars and nearly 110,000 Barhais in 1911, and found well-to-do Barhais beginning to wear the sacred thread; in the Tamil country Thurston recorded the Kammalans' claim to Brahman rank and their adoption of Brahmanical gotras.

Faith and Worship

Russell and Hira Lal (1916) write that the Barhais of the Central Provinces worshipped Vishwakarma. Thurston (1909) found the Tamil Kammalans followers of Saiva worship, with great reverence for Pillaiyar (Ganesha), some under Lingayat influence, and a goddess of their own, Kamakshi Amma, worshipped by all their divisions; girls were often named after her.

Customs

Thurston records that Kammalan weddings closely followed the Brahmanical ceremonial and lasted three or five days according to the family's means, with a bride-price (parisam) paid as among other communities. Russell and Hira Lal found that Barhai weddings in the Central Provinces followed the local rite with a Brahman priest, and that widows could remarry.