odd behaviour of Devanagari text

[beoram]

I'm having the following curious problem with Devangari text in Mew
under emacs:

(1) I can add Devanagari text to a message and it displays properly in
emacs/mew. E.g.:
 परो ऽक्षकामा हि देवाः

(2) When I send a message containing such text to another account and
check it
in a web-based email (including the email account that my mew setup
checks) it
still displays properly in the web-based email.

BUT:

(3) When I open a sent message in Mew the Devanagari text contains
misplaced
vowel symbols and broken conjunct consonants (as in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Multilingual_support_(Indic) ), as
such:

परो ऽकष॑कामा ह ि देवाः

I asked in a Mew forum, but the developer suggested that it might be
an emacs issue. Can
anyone point me in the direction of a fix?


thanks,
  --B.