The following command works, cobbled together from friendly advice and additional googling based on that input:
podman build --ulimit=nofile=131072:1048576 [other arguments here]
The latest releases of podman apparently accept --ulimit=host, which is convenient if you want the same policy, but 3.4.4 does not. For 3.4.4, you'll need to know the specific limit name.
These are not yet listed in podman documentation, but for the file descriptor limit the proper name is nofile. This Red Hat article may be helpful with regard to other limit names.
update:
podman documentation already specifies names available at https://docs.podman.io/en/v4.4/markdown/podman-build.1.html#ulimit-type-soft-limit-hard-limit
the option --ulimit=host is valid for podman create and podman run, but nof for podman build. For building is need to specify the format --ulimit=type=soft-limit[:hard-limit]
