Varuna’s characteristic attribute is the pasha, a noose or cord. Deities across traditions carry weapons that strike, cut or destroy, and a binding implement is a different kind of object with a different implication. A noose does not damage. It connects, and it holds one thing to another, and once fastened it does not need to do anything further to remain effective.
Read against Varuna’s function this makes exact sense. He is the guardian of an order in which acts and consequences are already linked, and his instrument is therefore one that fastens rather than one that punishes. The hymns describe him as binding the one who speaks anrta, and the binding is not presented as retaliation for an offence but as the tightening of a connection the person made themselves by acting. The texts also speak of him loosening the noose, which is what forgiveness looks like in a system organised this way: not the cancellation of a penalty but the release of a link.
There is a certain economy to this that later Indian thought inherits. If consequence is structural rather than administered, no bookkeeping is required and no judge has to be watching, which is exactly the position karma occupies in the mature tradition. The Vedic image of a god holding a cord is the same intuition at an earlier stage, still personified, still addressed in prayer, but already describing consequence as a matter of connection rather than of penalty.
A god who binds rather than strikes is a god of consequence rather than of punishment. To see how that idea developed, explore more of The Living Sanatan Timeline.
Part 28 of 100 — Series I: From the Beginning
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