Bhaskara Ravivarman II, a ruler of the Chera dynasty, grants the Jewish leader Joseph Rabban the rank of prince over the Jews of Cochin, giving him the rulership and tax revenue of a pocket principality in Anjuvannam near Cranganore, and rights to seventy-two "free houses".

The Hindu king gives permission in perpetuity (or, in the more poetic expression of those days, "as long as the world and moon exist") for Jews to live freely, build synagogues, and own property "without conditions attached".

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.

Duarte Pacheco Pereira picks up the first installment of the Zamorin's pepper payment at Cranganore without incident, but when the Portuguese return to pick up the second installment, a skirmish breaks out aboard the delivery ship between the Portuguese and the Zamorin's men.

The truce broken, a state of war resumes and the pepper blockade is immediately reinstated.

The Portuguese chroniclers blame the Zamorin for breaking the peace—that either he changed his mind (ultimately realizing he didn't want to lose the Italian engineers) or had been intending to break the peace all along, and merely agreed to it in order to save Calicut from being bombarded once again by the Portuguese.

However, others blame the Portuguese, suggesting they only agreed to the peace so long as they needed the pepper supplies to load the ships, but wanted the state of war to resume soon after.

Both hypotheses might be correct, i.e., that both the Zamorin and Albuquerque had entered the peace cynically, knowing fully well it was not likely to hold, but nonetheless found it useful enough to buy some time; the skirmish itself might have been unplanned, a simple misunderstanding, but neither side seems to be in a hurry to rectify or restore the peace.

Lopo Soares receives reports while in Cochin that the Zamorin of Calicut has dispatched a force to fortify Cranganore, the port city at the northern end of the Vembanad lagoon, and the usual entry point for the Zamorin's army and fleet into the Malabari backwaters.

Reading this as a preparation for a renewed attack on Cochin after his armada leaves, Lopo Soares decides on a preemptive strike.

He orders a squadron of around ten fighting ships and numerous Cochinese bateis and paraus, to head up there.

The heavier ships, unable to make their way into the shallow channels, anchor at Palliport (Pallipuram, on the outer edge of Vypin island, guarding the channel between Cranganore and the sea).

Converging on Cranganore, the Portuguese-Cochinese Vembanad fleet quickly disperses the Zamorin's forces on the beach with cannon fire, and then lands an amphibian assault force of some thousand Portuguese and another thousand Cochinese Nairs, who take on the rest of the Zamorin's forces in close combat.

The Zamorin's forces are defeated and driven away from the city.

The assault troops capture Cranganore, and subject the ancient city, the once-great capital of the Chera Dynasty of Kerala, to a thorough and violent sacking and razing.

Even while the main fighting is still going on, deliberate fires are set around the city by squads led by Duarte Pacheco Pereira and factor Diogo Fernandes Correa.

The fires quickly consume most of the city, save for the Syrian Christian quarters, which are carefully spared (Hindu and Jewish homes are not given the same consideration).

Hearing of the attack, the Zamorin dispatches a hastily-formed Calicut fleet, some five ships and eighty paraus, to save the city, but the idling Portuguese ships near Palliport intercept and defeat them in a brief naval encounter.

Two days later, the Portuguese receive an urgent message from the ruler of Tanur (Tanore), whose kingdom lies to the north, on the road between Calicut and Cranganore.

The raja of Tanur had come to loggerheads with his overlord, the Zamorin, and offered to place himself under Portuguese suzerainty instead, in return for military assistance.

He reports that a Calicut column, led by the Zamorin himself, had been assembled in a hurry to try to save Cranganore, but that he managed to block their passage at Tanur.

Lopo Soares immediately dispatches Pêro Rafael with a caravel and a sizeble Portuguese armed force to assist the Tanurese.

The Zamorin's column is defeated and dispersed soon after its arrival.

The raid on Cranganore and the defection of Tanur are serious setbacks to the Zamorin, effectively placing the Vembanad lagoon out of the Zamorin's reach.

Any hopes the Zamorin had of quickly resuming his attempts to capture Cochin via the backwaters are effectively dashed.

The Battle of Cochin has broken his authority.