Cabral, while still at Cochin, receives yet another invitation, this one from the nearby Cranganore kingdom.

Cranganore, capital of the Chera dynasty of the Sangam period, has seen better days.

Aformerly great city on the northern end of the Vembanad lagoon, the passage of time had silted up the channels that connected Cranganore to the waterways, and in the fourteenth century had broken open a competing sea outlet by Cochin.

Cochin's rise is principally due to the rerouting of commercial traffic away from Cranganore.

Nonetheless, the remaining merchants of the dwindling city still maintain heir old connections to the Kerala pepper plantations in the interior.

Finding the supply in Cochin running low, Cabral takes up the offer to top up his cargo at Cranganore.

The visit to Cranganore turns out to be an eye-opener for the Portuguese, for among the city's remaining inhabitants are substantial established communities of Malabari Jews and Syrian Christians.

The encounter with a clearly recognizable Christian community in Kerala confirms to Cabral what the Franciscan friars had already suspected back in Calicut—namely, that Vasco da Gama's earlier hypothesis about a 'Hindu Church' was mistaken.

If real Christians have existed alongside Hindus in India for centuries, then clearly Hinduism must be a distinct and separate religion, 'heathen idolaters', as the Portuguese friars characterized them, rather than a 'primitive' form of Christianity.

Two Syrian Christian priests from Cranganore apply to Cabral for passage to Europe (one of them, known as José de Cranganore or Joseph the Indian (Josephus Indus), will provide instrumental intelligence about India to the Portuguese.