[mew-int 2942] Odd behaviour of Devanagari text

I'm having the following curious problem: 

(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.

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 don't know if this is an emacs issue or a mew issue, but could someone point
me in the direction of a fix?


thanks,
  --B.