quality:correction, structural:expansion
Lineage

Satyajit Ray's ancestry can be traced back for at least ten generations. His family had acquired the name " Ray ". Although they were Bengali Kayasthas, the Rays were " Vaishnavas " (worshippers of Vishnu), as opposed to the majority of Bengali Kayasthas, who were " Shaktos " (worshippers of the Shakti or Shiva).

The earliest-recorded ancestor of the Ray family was Ramsunder Deo (Deb), born in the middle of the sixteenth century. He was a native of Chakdah village in the Nadia district of present-day West Bengal, India, and migrated to Sherpur in East Bengal. He became son-in-law of the ruler of Jashodal (in the present day Kishoreganj District of Bangladesh) and was granted a jagir (a feudal land grant). His descendants migrated to the village Masua in Katiadi Upazila of Kishoreganj in the first half of eighteenth century. Satyajit Ray's grandfather Upendrakishore Ray was born in Masua village, Kishorganj, in 1863. Upendrakishore's elder brother Saradaranjan Ray was one of the pioneers of Indian cricket and was called the W.G. Grace of India.

Upendrakishore Ray was a writer, illustrator, philosopher, publisher, amateur astronomer, and a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, a religious and social movement in 19th-century Bengal. He set up a printing press named U. Ray and Sons.

Satyajit's father and Upendrakishore's son, Sukumar Ray, who was also born in Kishorganj, was an illustrator, critic, and a pioneering Bengali writer of nonsense rhyme (Abol Tabol) and children's literature. Social worker and children's book author Shukhalata Rao was his aunt.