Ya, your are right polyherbal compound are tough to standardise in way given in pharmacopoeia.

Best is thay you use three way standardization tools

1. Standardization (Physico chemical std., heavy metal, microbial load, etc. analytical tools)

2. Follow a marker based standardization ( determine a marker from your formulation/ ingredients and set a minimum standard to check batch to batch variation).

3. TLC and HPTLC assay

In addition you may adopt some technique like HPLC, FTIR etc for additional fingerprinting of polyherbal formulation.

For more information,

Read article of Pulok K Mukharjee on google scholar, his article better said for this purpose.

Varunji, I agree with your answer. and these standards to be analysed have been established and may be are being cariedout to some extent in our Pharmacopia.

But the basic question remains the same 

How can you consider a single marker or multiple markers each from each ingredient you use in formulation. As you know each drug contains multiple active principles.

TLC, HPTLC again qualitative fine but quantitative by using all the standards??

Kindly give ur inputs

To avoide such condition and to get a way to standard. We may take one marker from one ingredients. Selection of single marker from several phytoconstituents is stall a challange we may opt most useful phytoconstituent as marker (either therapeutic effect or pharmacological effect basis. 

Yes I am agree with your input and question, it is partial answer to problem but in absence of such standard/ protocol we may opt in such a way.

A very good question. We need to work very seriously to standardize Herbal Compond/Formulations particularly with special reference to Ayurveda.

To standardize the herbal/Ayurvedic preparations I feel that following should be considered:

1. Record Date, Time , Region/Place, and State/Phase/maturity of plant collected

2. Each plant should be subjected to FINGERPRINTING (HPLC/TLS/molecular)

3.  Finger-printing of the herbal/Ayurvedic preparation using TLC/HPLC

then the sample/formulation should be prepared, which in-turn  should be subjected to various tested for the claimed medicinal property on cell line/test organism/human).

We should repeat above for Time , Place, and State/Phase of plant collected,

An evaluation of above will yield the sample having optimal medicinal properties. Thus we arrive at right Time , right Place, and right State/Phase of collection of herbs to give max medicinal properties. The finger printing data of the respective batch will be regarded as STANDARDS. for the respective formulation and compound.  For other information, if any, pl do write to me.

Thank you for your valuable inputs.