in the palace, fascination with the Mughal emperors, and the fact that he advocated independence from Britain wereall factors of inspiration for the short story.

The Mughal Empire is considered India's last strong dynasty. Great Britain became interested in India as a source of economic gains in as early as the 1600s. By 1707, the Mughal Empire began collapsing for many different reasons, including loss of revenues, loss of key authority figures, and losses due to several wars. In 1719, the Mughal emperor was executed, and the empire was broken up into regions ruled by multiple Mughal successors. In 1757, Englishman Robert Clive led troops of the East India Company, along with French allies, into the Battle of Plassey, allowing Britain to gain control of India ("Mughal Empire: Explanations for the decline"; "British Imperialism in India"). Hence, in Tagore's eyes, British imperialism in India was made possible because the Mughal dynasty fell due to corruptions.

In the short story, it becomes clear that the marble palace represents "countless unrequited passions and unsatisfied longings and lurid flames of wild blazing pleasure." These unsatisfied desires and passions have become trapped in the palace due to the fall of the Mughal Empire, a fall that eventually resulted in British rule over India. Hence, Tagore is using the marble palace to symbolize both the unrequited desires of the Mughal Empire due to the corruptions of the dynasty, desires that shall now never be fulfilled due to British imperialism. Hence, all in all, the marble palace symbolizes both the consequences of corruption and the consequences of imperialism.

I think that one of the strongest and most powerful implications from the short story is how the notion of established truth is a challenge in discerning.  Tagore leaves much in way of ambiguity in the story.  There is little resolution in its ending, and there is even less in terms of whether or not the story is even true.  This is enhanced by the fact that it is a frame story.  Srijut never recognized and fully grasps what is true and what isn't.  There is little in which the reader fully understands why what happens does happen.  Whether or not Srijut's story is even valid or whether it is a lie is never clear.  The implications of this are profound and I think that it is deliberate as to why Tagore does what he does.  On one hand, perhaps it is Tagore's desire to argue a type of "negative capability" intrinsic to human life in that not everything can be resolved and total certainty is impossible.  Within this, individuals must strive to find some level of happiness and be in awe of the narrative whose absolute certainty is elusive.  The other side of this coin would be that Tagore seeks to construct a narrative in which one cannot ascertain full truth, with the only reality being that we are suspended in thought, filled with dread.  Fear becomes the only absolute in this setting, one in which we are forced to succumb to elements larger than us in our daily consciousness.  The implications of what Tagore has created are intense in magnitude and wide ranging.

This one is going to be a bit tough because the story itself is one of the most challenging to dissect.  It is difficult to find a theme because the story's ending is suspended.  The companion's story of hopeful escape from the mansion is not completed, and accordingly, the judgment of whether the story is valid or false is also suspended.  The speaker and his "theosophist relative" disagreed on their own impressions of the narrative, causing a "rift which was never healed."  In this, one can see that it is difficult to find a definitive theme because of the suspended nature of both the story and the narrative framed within it.  It is Tagore's genius that he would provide a fragmented narrative in both the frame of the story and the story, itself.  With all of this in mind, I think that a theme that can be present is the idea of negative capability.  There is a level of uncertainty and lack of totality present in the short story.  The start of it features everyone telling the companion that he should avoid the palace at all costs, and his rebuke of such a claim.  Over time, he begins to recognize the truth of the warnings and the end result is that there is some larger force which is at work in the palace, one that cannot be fully appropriated or controlled.  In this, there is a theme of challenging control with the invariable opposite of a lack of control.  This assertion in a lack of totality and harmony is apparent in the ending of the story, one where there is the sense of the inconclusive evident along with disunity present in the telling of the narrative, as well.