Both traditions name a single non-human intermediary who fetches fire DOWN from heaven for mortals, and both hide the fire inside a plant in transit: latent in the araṇi wood until rubbed out; smoldering in the fennel pith until delivered. Comparative philology has linked the pair since Adalbert Kuhn (Die Herabkunft des Feuers, 1859) via Skt. pramantha (fire-drill churning stick) ~ Prometheus — the etymology is contested, but the shared motif structure (heavenly fire + named fetcher + fire concealed in a stalk of wood) is textually solid on both sides.
'One of you Mātariśvan brought from heaven' (1.93.6); the fire he brought is the one that 'lay concealed' and was 'rubbed forth' — 'What Mātariśvan, piercing, formed by friction' (1.148.1): the descent from heaven and the churning of the fire-drill are one continuous act, and the hidden fire lives in the wood between kindlings.
Prometheus carries the stolen fire down from heaven concealed in the hollow narthex stalk — a plant whose slow-smoldering pith was the actual ember-transport technology of the Greek world — unseen by the god of the thunder.
All Rigveda loci verified in Griffith's public-domain translation (Book 1 mirror): 1.93.6 'brought from heaven'; 1.141.3 'rubbed forth him who lay concealed'; 1.60.1 'As 'twere some goodly treasure Mātariśvan brought, as a gift, the glorious Priest to Bhrigu.' Hesiod verified in PG #348. The Kuhn comparison is standard scholarly history of the fire-theft motif (cited in any overview of Prometheus comparanda).
Our fact-checkers corrected the first draft:
Fire is never taken by force; it crosses the forbidden gap concealed in a tiny carried container · a hollow stalk, a woven thimble-bowl · after strength has failed.
In both traditions repopulation after the flood is not biological but liturgical: the survivor's post-landing sacrifice is the literal manufacturing step for the next humanity.
The sky power answers the fire-theft not with death but with a permanent alteration of the thief's body · and in both cases the wound is generative rather than terminal: the liver regrows nightly forever; the shattered limbs become the joints every human needs to work, kneel, and forge.
In both, heaven never announces the flood openly.