The problem is with the PDF font u have selected. Please select a font having a unicode characters. For example Arial_UnicodeMS. You want find this in the normal list of PDF fonts. But you can set the "windows fonts" path in the classpath of iReport. After doing this you will get this font name. Try one of the Identity-H or Identity-V. it will work wonders. Please see the attachement. In your case the Tamil fonts need to be in Unicode. Only then can u see the fonts correctly in pdf. But i feel Tamil by default will be unicode.