On Solaris 8 and 9 you should use /usr/ucb/install instead of just install. So it might me handsome to have some variable INSTALL=/usr/ucb/install at the beginning of the makefile. For now it helps prepending /usr/ucb to the PATH.

The makefile itself runs after a small change

*** poppler-data-0.1/Makefile   Fri Sep 22 03:34:37 2006
--- poppler-data-0.1_solaris/Makefile   Fri Sep  7 11:32:39 2007
***************
*** 16,22 ****
        install -m 0644 $(unicode-map-files) $(DESTDIR)$(pkgdatadir)/unicodeMap
  
        for f in $(cmap-files); do                                          \
!               install -d -m 0755 $(DESTDIR)$(pkgdatadir)/$$(dirname $$f); \
                install -m 0644 $$f $(DESTDIR)$(pkgdatadir)/$$f;            \
        done
  
--- 16,22 ----
        install -m 0644 $(unicode-map-files) $(DESTDIR)$(pkgdatadir)/unicodeMap
  
        for f in $(cmap-files); do                                          \
!               install -d -m 0755 $(DESTDIR)$(pkgdatadir)/`dirname $$f`; \
                install -m 0644 $$f $(DESTDIR)$(pkgdatadir)/$$f;            \
        done