The signature four elliptic theory of Ramanujan is provided with a counterpart to the Jacobian modular sine; this counterpart yields natural direct proofs of several hypergeometric identities recorded by Ramanujan, bypassing the signature four transfer principle of Berndt et al. [‘Ramanujan’s theories of elliptic functions to alternative bases’, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 347 (1995), 4163–4244].