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Max Muller 'follows Kuhn' in his explanation of Prometheus, the Fire- stealer, but he does not follow him all the way. Kuhn tried to account for the myth that Prometheus stole fire, and Mr. Max Muller does not try. Kuhn connects Prometheus with the Sanskrit pramantha, the stick used in producing fire by drilling a pointed into a flat piece of wood.
The Sanscrit word for the act of producing fire by friction is manthâmi, to rub or agitate, and this appears from its derivative mandala, a circle; that is, circular friction. The pieces of wood used for the production of fire were called pramantha, that which revolves, and arani was the disc on which the friction was made.
Agni had disappeared from earth and was concealed in a cavern, whence it was drawn by a divine person; that is, fire had disappeared and was concealed within the arani, whence it was extracted by the pramantha and bestowed upon man. Mâtariçvan, the divine deliverer, is therefore only the personification of the male organ.
He is the stealer of the fire from heaven, in order to make men share the secret of the gods. Comparative philology tells us, however, that the Sanskrit Pramantha is a stick that produces fire.
A resemblance was also traced between the instruments for kindling fire and the organs of generation, a reciprocal interchange of various myths, as we have before observed. Thus pramantha is the masculine instrument, arani the feminine, and the act of uniting them is copulation.
The word means "a churning-stick," and it appears also, with a prefixed preposition, in the name of the fire-drill, pramantha. Now Kuhn has proved that this name, pramantha, is etymologically identical with Prometheus, the name of the beneficent Titan, who stole fire from heaven and bestowed it upon mankind as the richest of boons.
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