Ever heard your grandmother swearing by a decoction made of violet flowers when you sneezed and coughed constantly? In no time gulping it made you feel better, sneeze less and you couldn't resist going to deep sleep. That is the magic bounteous banaksha or banafsha herb offers. Sweet-scented lovely violet flowers blooming in wild environs or sometimes sneaking from corners of grasslands, viola odorata or banafsa in Sanskrit and sweet violet, garden violet, and florist’s violet in English is a popular medicinal herb of Unani medicinal science which has been cultivated since ancient times for a medicinal purpose.