The poetics of the Sanskrit ornate epic ( mahākāvya), recognized as the most prestigious genre of Sanskrit kāvya literature, significantly rely on literary devices creating the sense of grandeur. The aim of this study is investigate the notion of atiśaya discussed by early works on Sanskrit literary theory and to identify it as a focal term within a discourse explicating the poetics of grandeur characteristic of mahākāvya genre. The here introduced distinction between atiśaya and hyperbole enables to capture the specificity of literary grandeur in mahākāvya compositions and elucidates the broader matter of ‘excess’ in the Sanskrit literature.