A story preserved in the Puranas gives Vishvakarma's craftsmanship a family motive rather than a cosmic one. His daughter Sanjna, married to the sun god Surya, found her husband's radiance unbearable and left a shadow double, Chhaya, in her place while she withdrew to the wilderness disguised as a mare. When Surya eventually tracked her down, her father is said to have mounted the sun on his lathe and pared away an eighth of its brilliance, so that Surya became bearable to look upon and to live beside.
Several Puranic tellings add that the shavings ground from the sun's disc did not go to waste: Vishvakarma forged them into the weapons carried by the greatest gods, Vishnu's discus, Shiva's trident, Kartikeya's spear and Kubera's mace among them, so that the sharpest instruments of heaven are described as literally cut from surplus sunlight. The story recasts Vishvakarma's usual identity as builder of palaces and cities into something more domestic, an act performed to save a daughter's marriage, and gives a mythic origin both to eclipse traditions, since the sun is diminished from its original brilliance, and to the association of grinding, fire and metalwork with a god who is, before any temple or chariot, the craftsman who first made the sun fit to be looked at.