Handbook of Classical Sanskrit Rhetoric /60

<headword> अतिशयोक्ति </headword>
 
अतिशयोक्तिः Atiśayoktiḥ : Hyperbole :
 
It is ati sśaya ukti (ukli √vac kti < ktin). The word atiśaya means excess,
exaggeration, pre-eminence, surpassing, extra-ordinary, par excellence etc;
ukti means statement, expression, idea, (Greek hyper beyond, ballo I
throw). Therefore, atisśayokti means a bold exaggeration, an over-state-
ment of facts, an elegant straining of the truth, surpassing of the matter-of-
fact description. Rhetorically Atiśayokti occurs if and when the object
of description (ie upameya) is completely swallowed up by another
object (ie upamāna or non-referent which is superimposed on the
referent) and as a result, complete identification of the latter upon
the former is apprehended.
 
This kind of figurative expression is found to be very common
to all languages. In Sanskrit rhetoric, Atiśayokti has been recom-
mended as one of the three principal types of poetic diction,
namely--
(a) svabhāvokti (natural statement),

(b)
 
vakrokti (metaphoric statement) and

(c) atiśayokti (hyperbolic statement).

In such artistic device of language, rhetorically known as
Atiśayokti, a poet intends to express or signify some extra-ordinary
feature of an object, and it is due to some refinement of the poet's
imaginative faculty which excels in superseding the matter-of-fact
aspect of a thing. Dandṇḍin regards it as the finest of all figures of
speech, while Kuntaka recognises it as the soul of all figurative
expression and remarks that, in such poetic observation, the aes-
thetic quality of the literary meaning is sublimely raised to the state
of perfection through artistic contemplation. This figure is based
on introsusception (adhyavasāna) which happens in two ways:

(i) firstly an object appears to be swallowed up by another

and
and
(ii)
 
secondly an object seems, as it were, swallowed up by

another.

This process of introsusception is slightly different from super-
imposition (āropa) which is the basis of the figure Rūpaka
(Metaphor). Ancient Indian poetics observed that this poetic device