Sample Script
<html>
<head>
<title>Hindi</title></head>
<body>
<?php
include("connection.php"); //simple connection setting
$result = mysql_query("SET NAMES utf8"); //the main trick
$cmd = "select * from hindi";
$result = mysql_query($cmd);
while ($myrow = mysql_fetch_row($result))
{
echo ($myrow[0]);
}
?>
</body>
</html>
The dump for my database storing hindi utf strings is
CREATE TABLE `hindi` (
`data` varchar(1000) character set utf8 collate utf8_bin default NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
INSERT INTO `hindi` VALUES ('सूर्योदय');
charset in the HTML Head section
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8">
set content type in your php script using
header( 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8' );
Mysql Example
CREATE DATABASE hindi_test
CHARACTER SET utf8
COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
USE hindi_test;
CREATE TABLE `hindi` (`data` varchar(200) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci;
INSERT INTO `hindi` (`data`) VALUES('कंप्यूटर');