100 Rupees Without small text under Ashoka column

The P#85 series spans a particularly turbulent stretch of Indian monetary policy — the period bracketed by the 1973 oil shock on one side and the balance-of-payments pressures of the late 1980s on the other. What distinguishes the "without small text" variety from its successors is the absence of the fine-print inscription below the Ashoka column pillar, a detail added in later printings as part of incremental security upgrades rather than any single formal redesign.

Four different signatories appear across the series run, reflecting genuine institutional churn at the RBI governorship — Jagannathan, Puri, Narasimham, and I. G. Patel each held the position during this window, making signature attribution the primary tool for dating individual specimens more precisely than the broad series years allow.