Sina

Sina, the maiden of the Samoan coconut-origin myth Sina ma le Tuna ('Sina and the Eel'): she keeps an eel (Tuna, a transformed Fijian king who loves her) that, when slain, bids her bury its head, from which the first coconut tree grows — the three marks on the husked nut being the eel's eyes and mouth. Treated as a mortal woman (the Samoan Sina of this tale; cognate with the pan-Polynesian Sina/Hina). No kin is attested in this myth-cycle — see SOLITARY flag. Documented by Turner and Krämer (secondary).

Domains

• origin of the coconut
• beauty and maidenhood

Powers

• Bury the slain eel's head as bidden, whence the first coconut tree springs

Relations

• equated with: HinaReflex of the same ancestral Polynesian deity (*Hina), cognate across the island groups.Comparative Polynesian mythology: reflexes of the same ancestral deity across the island groups (E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891; R. D. Craig, Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology, 1989) (secondary)
• equated with: HinaReflex of the same ancestral Polynesian deity (*Hina), cognate across the island groups.Comparative Polynesian mythology: reflexes of the same ancestral deity across the island groups (E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891; R. D. Craig, Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology, 1989) (secondary)
• equated with: HinaReflex of the same ancestral Polynesian deity (*Hina), cognate across the island groups.Comparative Polynesian mythology: reflexes of the same ancestral deity across the island groups (E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891; R. D. Craig, Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology, 1989) (secondary)
• equated with: Ina (woman in the moon)Reflex of the same ancestral Polynesian deity (*Hina), cognate across the island groups.Comparative Polynesian mythology: reflexes of the same ancestral deity across the island groups (E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891; R. D. Craig, Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology, 1989) (secondary)
• equated with: HinaReflex of the same ancestral Polynesian deity (*Hina), cognate across the island groups.Comparative Polynesian mythology: reflexes of the same ancestral deity across the island groups (E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891; R. D. Craig, Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology, 1989) (secondary)
• equated with: HinaReflex of the same ancestral Polynesian deity (*Hina), cognate across the island groups.Comparative Polynesian mythology: reflexes of the same ancestral deity across the island groups (E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891; R. D. Craig, Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology, 1989) (secondary)
• equated with: NuahineReflex of the same ancestral Polynesian deity (*Hina), cognate across the island groups.Comparative Polynesian mythology: reflexes of the same ancestral deity across the island groups (E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891; R. D. Craig, Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology, 1989) (secondary)

Sources

• existence: G. Turner, Samoa, a Hundred Years Ago and Long Before (1884), the coconut-origin myth (secondary); A. Krämer, Die Samoa-Inseln (1902/03; Eng. The Samoa Islands), Sina ma le Tuna (secondary)
• heroine-of-the-coconut-origin-myth: G. Turner, Samoa (1884): Sina, the eel, and the first coconut tree (secondary)